I don’t think I’ve darted to our front door faster than last evening, to be in receipt of the long anticipated new book by Gil Schafer III. Nor have I ever incessantly refreshed the tracking details for any delivery. At last, it is here.
I have long admired this particular Block Island project (pictured below) Gil’s firm completed along with landscape architect Deborah Nevins, and decorator, Miles Redd (now Redd Kaihoi), ever since it was published in Veranda two years ago. The home presides over Block Island’s Great Salt Pond, a place I grew up visiting with my family when we’d take day trips or overnights by boat from Newport. The landscape also holds a special place for my husband and I particularly during our courtship, in addition to the fact that my husband has a project next door to this very property. Every time I tag along to his job site visits, I am subtly snooping next door.
For anyone that knows Block Island, it is nowhere near other isles like Nantucket or even the Vineyard. Certainly not the Hamptons. Fancy hotels and restaurants do not exist. No one is beach bound in designer labels. There is a certain rawness and palpable spirit to the island. Rightfully so, locals fiercely protect and defend from outsiders that might test these characteristics. Though this has indeed been challenged over the more recent years as some are priced out of summer destinations mentioned above, the general ethos of the island remains. In fact, The Block Island Trust works closely with The Nature Conservancy and the Block Island Conservancy to preserve nearly 50% of the island’s land for open space. Point being, anyone that is stepping foot on the island to build, develop, design, or in some way alter, immediately has a microscope on them. I think Gil and his project teams did a beautiful job of honoring the island while building a legacy home that will stand the test of time.
While there are so many wonderful spaces in this home, there is something so intoxicating about this living room — the multiple seating groups with inviting furniture scales, its textured pink grasscloth walls, and the space’s way of inviting you in for a nap, a post-beach cocktail, or a moment to admire the view, which extends over the pond and into the Atlantic Ocean. There is a certain elegance juxtaposed with a casualty, where one could enter with sandy feet and a caftan damp from the ocean’s saltwater. The room and home also demonstrates what I love so much about good design, it is that feeling where you cannot get an image of a room out of your head, and then revisit again and again to further dissect it.
A big bravo to Gil Schafer on this publication, and to all of the teams involved creating this home.
