Michael Shannon Designs - Interior Design
PHILADELPHIA MAGAZINE, JANUARY 2010
THE SIMPLE LIFE
Exposed brick, post-and-timber constructionand Society Hill views:A marvelous Washington Square conversion provides the perfect setting for the inimitably handsome, thoroughly chic, completely convenient, inherently warm, and totally comfortable design of Michael Shannon
BY LAUREN McCUTCHEON
PHOTOGRAPHY BY STEVE GIRALT
STYLING BY BARBARA BOTTING
Previous spread: Shannon, with help from Peter Granzano and the construction team at Insight Enterprises, converted a portion of the building’s old fire stairwell into a library. A mohair sofa made by Martin Industries picks up on the color of the exposed brick. The vintage poster comes from one of the Lessers’ annual trips to France. A Dutch figurine on a Cumberland coffee table is a family heirloom. Far left: Roma Brothers created a dark-stained ebonized oak dining room table with three leaves to provide seating for 12. On the table are glass by Michael Schunke of Nine Iron Studios in West Grove. Behind the table, a painting by Larry Faiola. Around it, chairs upholstered in Donghia’s Woolborne. The connecting arch was Shannon’s idea; he designed it to repeat the proportion of the living room’s arched windows. Left: The guest room’s crimson accent wall provides “a little life,” says Shannon. The adjoining storage-glass wall by Ferrous Nonferrous Metalwork allows for visual privacy and sends natural light to the adjoining hallway. Bedding by Kellijane.
Call it the empty nesters’ décor dilemma. The kids are grown. The house is too big for just you two. You decide to move to the most fabulous raw space for a home, in a splendid historical building in the city. Now, what to do with all your stuff? Not the important things, of course, not the art, or the heirlooms, or the kids’ ceramics projects from long-gone days at summer camp. But the other things: the furniture and rugs and bedding and appliances and accessories your family grew up on and around. If you’re longtime Lafayette Hill and now Washington Square residents Joye and Bruce Lesser, you take a deep breath. And you: Just. Let. It. Go. All of it. Well, first you hire Michael Shannon, who plans the smartest layout for your new lifestyle (a two-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath with home office and library), the most gorgeous color palette (a nod to the building’s original details), the coziest custom furniture (a perfect fit for your smaller yet still voluminous space), and the most amazingly seamless storage solutions (for the stuff you just can’t part with).
Facing east, the living room’s wide windows look out to I.M. Pei’s Society Hill Towers and offer “stunning views of the water,” says Shannon. He exposed 14-foot timber-beam ceilings here and in the master bedroom to contrast their volume with other rooms, giving “more intimate spaces more importance,” he says. The designer enlisted a number of local millwork studios to create paneling and cabinetry: Philly Designs built the rift-cut oak fluted demi-storage on either side of the brown-marble fireplace. The coffee table is Holly Hunt. Upholstery is Martin Industries. The painting above the sectional, a Joye Lesser original.
Left: In the entryway, with its dramatic steel support columns—another relic of the building’s days as a publisher’s warehouse—a cedar ceiling leads to the living room’s taller one. The ottomans are upholstered in Donghia’s Peacock. Above left: For the home office, the huge glass-and-steel wall, as in the bedroom, extends into sliding doors. The painting of Boathouse Row is by Joseph Sweeney. The chair is one of the few pieces brought from the Lessers’ former house; Shannon had it reupholstered. The table lamp was a gift from Shannon to the Lessers. Above right: For the dressing area leading to the master bath, Shannon chose white onyx countertops and pickled rift-sawn oak cabinetry by Contemporary Antiques. The round window is original to the building.
Above left: In the Joanne Hudson kitchen, a mosaic backsplash alternates honed and polished tile, “to add sparkle here and there,” says Shannon. The cabinets, made of reconstituted oak with a horizontal grain, are Downsview. The countertops are concrete. Above: The master bedroom, with a bed made by Rob Frasca and finished by Contemporary Artifacts, overlooks an old light well. The designer had the entire wall behind the bed and the floor-to-ceiling window also overlooking the light well draped, “to create a soft backdrop.” Bedding by Kellijane. Right: The Lessers requested space to eat in the kitchen. The designer complied with an area at the end of the island, designated for dining via a suspended light by Focus, USA and tall bar stools by Bright. To contact Michael Shannon: Michael Shannon Designs, 1314 Sansom Street, 215-717-1094, michaelshannondesign.com.