Collecting Enchantment
The simple gabled façade belies curated Victorian rooms within.
An unassuming gabled Victorian on Long Island, the house was built ca. 1856 by Edward Howell, a Hamptons whaling captain. The house stayed in his family until the late 1970s. Set on three acres of orchards and farmland, it had never been significantly altered. The designer Ann Pyne came upon the property on a grey and blustery day in the fall of 1983, and she immediately felt at home.
Ann Pyne is the daughter of legendary interior designer Betty Sherrill, the late chairman of McMillen Inc., New York City’s oldest continually operating design firm. Ann says that her mother humored her but never truly understood the love her daughter developed for the 19th-century antiques she collected to furnish the simple Victorian house.
The old house had been maintained by the Howells and just needed freshening. An appropriate William Morris pattern replaced striped wallpaper in the front parlor. The dining room became a leafy bower with the installation of a Louis Bowen wallpaper with undulating bands of pale-green roses. Systems were, of course, updated, but the original hot-water radiators still work.
Early renovation included the kitchen, a straightforward room with beadboard walls and cabinet fronts, and updated appliances. The ceiling, 10 feet in height, gave the room a stunning Victorian Revival presence when Ann papered it with Bradbury & Bradbury’s Morris-inspired pomegranates. At this point, Ann and her family settled in, and little else changed for 30 years.
Ann Pyne, who came to McMillen Inc. in 2002 and is the firm’s president, had inherited her mother’s eye for color and design.
But her embrace of Victorian hadn’t been immediate. She recalls her first visit to a dealer in 19th-century antiques, when, dismayed by the “heavy, ugly” furniture, she bought an overstuffed Turkish armchair, the least offensive piece, and left.
In the years that followed, Ann researched the styles of the late 19th century, meeting dealers and attending
shows and auctions. Taking her grandmother’s rosewood Rococo parlor suite as her starting point, she began collecting, and decided to furnish each room as an example of a particular style.
Bitten by the bug, Ann Pyne continued to acquire antiques and so turned to renovation of the ample barn. With an assumption the space would be used for children and grandchildren, the two main rooms were painted a neutral white and stabilized with new pine floors. The upper loft retains the smell of hay. The stage was set for the display of collections with a British focus, of both Aesthetic and Arts & Crafts design. Ann admits that the grandchildren were soon asked to play elsewhere, after she found that drinks spilled in the loft had left a sticky film on a row of museum-quality, George Tinworth ceramic bible maquettes atop a bookshelf.