Fundamental FARMHOUSE

WITH 19th CENTURY CHARM

Come into this old house in New York’s Hudson Valley to find rooms inspired by those described in 19th-century novels. Owner James Coviello is a reader, a traveler, a collector of curiosities, and an appreciator of times past. He’s also a talented fashion designer whose work, like his house, is vintage-inspired and detail-oriented.

The son of artistic parents, Coviello grew up in Connecticut reading such authors of literary Naturalism as Emile Zola. “The style of certain 19th-century novels has always drawn me,” he says. “The very detailed descriptions of daily life, and the domestic surroundings in which their characters move, evoke a feeling I try to re-create for myself”—with a bit of Edith Wharton thrown in for good measure.

The four-bay house was built in a vernacular Greek Revival style in 1840; the Victorian porch came somewhat later. Originally the house belonged to a shoemaker who worked in his small shop next door. Two additions date to the late 19th century. When Coviello was househunting 20 years ago, this was the first property he looked at. He says it met all his requirements, the main one being that it was “spared from vinylization in the 1960s.” Nothing too ghastly had happened to the interior.

The house is painted in Coviello’s preferred ocher, accented with black shutters. He has replaced the dilapidated asphalt roof with cedar shakes, and upgraded the picket fence to cedar as well. With the help of a good restoration carpenter, Gabe Shaftlein, Coviello rescued the living room’s Greek Revival mantel, which had been stored in the barn. Shaftlein skill

The kitchen addition attached to the main house was last remodeled in the 1950s. Coviello gained space by lifting the low ceiling and replacing cabinets with unfitted furnishings and shelves.

fully reworked it to fit the fireplace added sometime in the 1920s. He also made the built-in bookcases with pilaster details to match the style of the mantel.

In tackling the kitchen addition, which was last remodeled in the 1950s, Coviello decided to gut it and raise the height of the 6 ½ ' ceiling. He added the 19thcentury beadboard to walls, and used oldfashioned, stand-alone cupboards instead of cabinetry. Painstakingly, he unearthed the blue-painted wood floor that had been buried under three stubborn layers of resilient flooring and plywood. Coviello sorted out plumbing that dated from the 1930s, updating the system, even coming up with inventive ways to incorporate vintage bath fixtures (found at salvage yards) with the new plumbing.

Furnished with velvet-upholstered couches laden with cushions, gently worn oriental carpets, framed mirrors, and talismanic objects from his far-flung travels, the rooms reveal an aesthete’s deep delight in the luxuries of the past; the interior is, Coviello says, “a cocoon for my spiritual essence.”

He’s added lacquered Coromandel screens, Old Paris vases, Chinese porcelain, and girandoles with big glass drops. In a bathroom, spiky antlers and

taxidermy co-exist with soothing plants in big, terra-cotta pots. Pictures hang over mantels, with faded notes and cards tucked into the frames. Rooms are deeply layered, maintaining the fiction that this was all built upon the accumulations of generations. The eclectic mix is a truer evocation of reality than an academic purity would be. At the same time, it feels like a return to the neo-Victorian decorating trends of a generation ago.

Born with a sixth sense for scoping out interesting finds, James Coviello began collecting when he was 12 years old. A habitual shopper of flea markets and auctions, he has treasure-hunted in Paris, London, China, and Peru—as well as in the Gowanus neighborhood of Brooklyn and in Hudson, New York. He’s selectively chosen quirky items along the way, including a dozen cuckoo clocks he picked up for next to nothing, which hang on one wall. A 19th-century, dragon-embellished chandelier found in Lima was a musthave, and somehow fit in his suitcase.

Besides gleaning decorating ideas from old novels, Coviello visits historic-house museums for study. “The first decorating style I really recognized was Aesthetic Movement,” he says. “For me, it has all the bells and whistles: It’s dark and Gothic, stylized, ebonized. It is aesthetic sophistication—the opposite of what I call Abraham Lincoln Style… that 1860s American look with big globe lanterns and crystal chandeliers, a stuffy White House look.”

Small details are often overlooked in restoration, but not by James Coviello. He uses only old, period glass to replace broken window lights, buying old windows as salvage so that he has the glass on hand. The plumbing fittings of a vintage bathroom sink have been nickel-plated.

“I’ve made it my life’s mission to seek out interesting and beautiful objects. The care is telling,” he says.

RIGHT The 1840 Greek Revival farmhouse is in Columbia County, N.Y. The kitchen addition at the right dates to the late 19th century. ABOVE In a juxtaposition of smooth and rough, delicate Buddhist Kuan Yin figurine lamps sit on a handmade shelf above stacks of firewood.

ABOVE The original Greek Revival-style mantel, found stored in the barn, was enlarged to fit around the fireplace added in the 1920s. Bookcases were built to match. Velvet-upholstered facing sofas encourage conversation; the iron garden stands became movable cocktail tables. LEFT A gilded pier mirror and delicate Windsor chairs are set against an ocher backdrop. FAR LEFT A 1910 toilet was fitted into the modern plumbing, a feat for the plumber. OPPOSITE Above a pine Shaker table hangs a Victorian gasolier the homeowner found in one of the many corrugated stalls in Lima, Peru— ”chock-full of 19th-century antiques from the robber-baron years.”

SINK SALVAGE Leggy porcelain-oncast-iron sinks of the 1930s were found for the kitchen and pantry.

ABOVE The low kitchen ceiling was raised and beadboard added. The painted wood floor was uncovered during renovation. OPPOSITE (clockwise from top) The owner turned the storage room into a butler’s pantry with the addition of a salvaged sink. Some of his large collection of Old Paris vases line the shelf: “They’re often inexpensive and look great grouped together.” • A double sink came from a Brooklyn dealer. • Turn-of-the20th-century cupboards, worktable, and shelves replaced 1950s cabinets.

PATINA OF AGE Upstairs, sound but imperfect plaster walls—some unpainted and cracked, some with remnants of old wallpaper—were simply left as they were found. ABOVE A Coromandel screen from Hong Kong is tucked behind a cannonball bed. A Victorian funerary collage under glass hangs on the never-painted plaster wall. LEFT The bath was redone with a clawfoot tub and ca.1900 marble sink from salvage stores. Sink fittings were replated in nickel. RIGHT A 19thcentury baldachin (ceremonial canopy) discovered in London’s Portobello Road hangs above the Jenny Lind spindle bed of tiger maple. OPPOSITE. The cuckoo clocks, $10 for the lot, came from an antiques shop in Hudson, N.Y.