If you’re curious about what some 30 designers would do if let loose to update and inject some fun into a stately, historic mansion, Chadds Ford is the place to get to before the month ends.
The Decorator Showhouse & Gardens, a fundraiser for the Oxford Arts Alliance, runs through May 30 at Stonebridge, an early-20th-century Georgian Revival mansion located on Webb Road and Route 1. The event showcases the work of the area’s top interior and landscape designers in an effort to emulate the long-running yearly Vassar showhouse event, which ended in 2006.
Tina Skinner, managing director of the arts alliance, says that in a previous career as an editor she put together four books on similar show houses, so the idea of doing a show house as a fundraiser came naturally. “It seemed like fun,” Skinner says. “I like working with creative people and it seemed like it fit the mission of the arts alliance.”
The mansion, which is currently for sale, was in good general condition, with 19-inch stone walls and ornately carved woodwork throughout. Most of the designers acknowledged its elegance and history in their work but harmonized traditional styles with touches of more modern drama and spontaneity, blending past and present, formal and fun.
A good number of the designers represented are based in or near Kennett Square. Colleen Simpson of Kennett’s Wayne Simpson Architect, Inc. renovated the dining room with an upbeat, contemporary spirit—”sophisticated casual,” Simpson says, “forms and color as opposed to fussy.”
Sharon Houck of Sharon R. Houck Interiors, Inc. in East Fallowfield redid a northeast bedroom with a variety of Asian motifs dominated by a dramatic four-poster bed specially made for the event. Mary Cairns of Mary Cairns Interiors in Kennett redecorated the second-floor hallway, and Lisa O. Cope and Janice L. Clark of Simply Divine Interiors in Unionville renovated another northeast bedroom with traditional period styles and added a faux fireplace to cover a radiator.
The event will run through May 30, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily, extended until 7 p.m. Wednesdays and Fridays. For more information visit www.oxfordart.org.
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