Lasting First Impression

STYLE ROOM – February 2014
Susan Grisanti | Editor-in-Chief 

At our 1864 house on Portland’s Munjoy Hill, the front entryway is where guests enter from the street, and also where my children and I transition from the shared, public spaces downstairs to the private spaces upstairs. The corridor is at once vintage and modern, rustic and stately, stylish and utterly livable. The rough “runner” of the original stairway’s bare-wood treads mixes with the soft and shimmery bamboo silk rug and gilded bowls and tray. On the floor, a tone-on-tone stain is a nod to the traditional black and white diamond pattern, but a bit softer and more modern. Pale walls and gleaming white trim are the perfect backdrop for graphic black and white artwork, a drawing by Heather Chontos, and a set of African mirror-eyed jaguar masks by fine art photographer Barbara Goodbody, which grace the space with powerful indigenous wisdom. 

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