Artful home Pittsburgh love came with couple to Florida
Art historian Ellaine Rosen did not leave her love of art behind when she and her husband, attorney Richard Rosen, moved from Pittsburgh to Naples, Fla. “I loved it,” she said of her 35 years as a docent at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Oakland.
She has continued to do art tours for 13 more years at the Baker Museum in Naples and is a docent at the city’s Holocaust Museum. Most recently, she gave lectures on Keith Haring as part of Naples Art’s exhibition featuring the artist and will do the same for a Toulouse-Lautrec exhibit this month.
She spends much of her time preparing for the talks in her office, which looks out onto a canal behind the home. Pittsburgh designer Jim Checkeye of Evelyn James Interiors used zebra-stripe wallpaper and high-gloss black and red lacquer paint to make a dramatic statement in the space.
“It was once a cabana room that Jim turned into my office,” she explained.
“The Rosens have been clients for years and have treated me like family,” Checkeye said. “They stick to their aesthetic andhave definite likes and dislikes.”
The Rosens’ home combines nostalgia and the couple’s passion for art. Her late mother gave them many interesting and beautiful things, including the iron gates that hang on the entrance wall.
“It was Jim’s idea because I wanted to keep them,” Mrs. Rosen noted.
While living in Pittsburgh, the couple started spending more and more time in Florida and finally moved here full time two years ago.
From the cheetah statue near the entrance to the mezuzahs by various artists throughout the home, “everything in this house has a story,” she said.
Mrs. Rosen can tell you where every object came from and sometimes who made it or owned it. “For instance, the cheetah, I bought him from the Vendome in Pittsburgh probably 50-some years ago.”
The piano was a gift from her great-grandparents to her parents when they got married. Her great-grandparents came from Poland to New York in 1888.
She points to a vase she carried home from France and to a mirror in the dining room. Its frame originally held an oil painting. When the painting was damaged, the frame was salvaged for the new mirror.
A large floral glass chandelier came from China. “It took forever to get here,” she recalled.
Her love of art is obvious — the walls of her home are adorned with a variety of artwork by many artists.
“They have a lot of beautiful things and we wanted to showcase their art collection,” said Checkeye.
At one time, Mr. Rosen coownedUsquaebach,a Scotch whisky distillery in Scotland whose name means “water of life.” Before selling the company, he and his partner presented a bottle to the late Prince Rainier III and Princess Grace of Monaco. Several old bottles are on display in his office, a traditional wood-paneled room that looks out to the pool.
A two-way fireplace separates the expansive pool from the lanai area. Yellow dancing zebras upholster two Scalamandre chairs opposite a zebra-striped love seat, creating a conversation area in front of the outdoor fireplace. The cocktail table was made using four architectural elementstopped by clear glass.
Mrs. Rosen, an avid needlepointer, has her pillows throughout the home as well as custom leather pillows by Pittsburgh artist Roberta Weissburg. The pillows represent works by Mondrian and Modigliani along with an Andy Warhol Campbell’s soupcan.
Weissburg also created a leather bedspread featuring a Matisse figure, and Mrs. Rosen added a needlepoint pillow with the same image.
“I started out with a $20 Matisse poster I had framed, and Roberta made the bedspread,” she explained.
Checkeye noted the many Pittsburgh references in the home.
“It was a lot of fun combining the Rosens’ Florida and Pittsburgh homes into one,” he said.