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Rooms with a view into creativity

By Elizabeth Bettendorf
Published March 17, 2006

BEACH PARK - Interior designer David Van Ling envisioned a master bedroom suite befitting a waterfront Mediterranean revival home in one of Florida's most romantic old neighborhoods.

He wanted a stylish traditional look accented with a hint of the contemporary, a soothing room filled with exquisite handmade Italian furniture and European fabrics. He also wanted a touch of the sensual, a scattering of shells and rock crystals, a pair of Turner-esque landscape paintings and a trio of 1810 Chinese Celadon plates displayed on Lucite shelves above the bed.

"I was trying to create a pared-down traditional look with contemporary accents,'' Van Ling explained last week shortly after he and his staff put the finishing touches on the first-floor room in the Florida Orchestra Tampa Guild's designer show house.

The show house, Casa de Fuentes, a newly built Spanish-style home at 4816 W Beachway Drive, opens Sunday and runs through April 9.

The house, the guild's first in Tampa since 1999, may well prove to be the hottest ticket in town. Proceeds will benefit the Florida Orchestra.

The $15 tours offer an up-close look at the work of 16 interior designers, decorators and artisans, all of whom seem to have joined karma when creating their spaces.

"We tried to bring in both the architecture and the wrought-iron,'' explained Linda Cox of Robb & Stucky Interiors, which provided the furnishings for the great room. "We wanted a look of restrained, quiet opulence.''

Unlike some show houses that feel disparate and disjointed because of dramatic differences in the color scheme and flavor of each room, Casa de Fuentes flows with a unified ease.

It didn't happen by accident.

"We really wanted it to flow,'' says Orchestra Guild member Liz Tepper, who served as design coordinator along with guild member Mary Anna White. "We felt very strongly that there should not be glaring changes from room to room. Every designer gave us a plan, and we had the owner sign off on it all. It's going to be gorgeous, really gorgeous. And you're going to see a lot of green in all of the rooms, which is the color of the year this year.''

Indeed green, specifically celery, is the hottest color to make its way from the fashion runways to interior design color palettes in the last few seasons.

The color makes an appearance in many of the rooms, including a second-floor guest suite where designer Melanee Friscia, who works for Franco Pasquale Design, thinks she hit the perfect shade.

"Sherwin Williams 6431 - celery,'' she said one day last week as she studied the wall color so deliciously pale green and crisp that it would have paired well with a bloody Mary.

The room offers a retreat for the travel-weary guest with an antique French bed with a caned headboard accented with raffia, two clean, crisp club chairs covered in light herringbone linen, striped linen drapery panels, a contemporary chandelier with Plexiglas accents, and a duvet cover in shades of celery and sage.

"What suited our vision was a look that was very classic, yet contemporary - clean and crisp,'' she said. That look, she explained, in a way embodies the signature look of her design firm. "And the great thing about a show house is that you're really able to do a room exactly the way you want it.''

Wendy Albano rolled the cool greens into the master bedroom where she created striped walls in two shades of lime.

"This is definitely the house of green,'' she said laughing.

Albano chose to make the room "crisp, tailored and clean'' with contemporary black and white bedding, white slipcovered upholstered furniture and a black desk with a lime-green ultrasuede chair.

In the master bath, artist Joanne Karpay carried the celery theme a step further with her beautiful paintings in the master bathroom, subtle bamboo branches brushing against the palest of green painted backdrop. Karpay, whose work appears at the Lotus Room yoga studio and art gallery on Kennedy Boulevard, also painted elegant fleur-de-lis and arabesques on the columns in the dining room/music room for interior designers Jennie Smith and Robin Logan .

The idea was to achieve the faded fresco look, "kind of like Viscaya,'' explained Smith. Though the room is not green, the warm colors work well with the rest of the house. Smith said she is trying to create a look that is both old and new, mixing a sideboard she designed from antique French iron gates topped with a water-washed stone slab with a contemporary round glass dining room table with leather-embossed chairs.

A grand piano, a harp and other musical instruments will be incorporated into the music room, partly a nod to the Florida Orchestra's involvement and partly for practical reasons (musicians will play them at show house fundraisers).

Upstairs, Patti Thomas and Ashley Moran, sisters-in-law and great friends who own Little Peeps, a South Tampa children's speciality store, decorated a fantasy nursery befitting a princess. They painted the walls a shade called "pink bliss'' and outfitted a gold-washed iron crib with cherub toile fabric bedding. On the walls, will hang a custom-designed banner twined with paper roses, adorned with a Swarovski crystals and the words "Sweet Dreams.'' Over the bed, a ribboned crown. And against the wall, a starlight wardrobe, an ultra feminine armoire with a mesh front that allows light from the chandelier inside to peek through.

A few steps away, designer Eric Krause created a quiet room intended for reading, napping or a game of chess. Highlights include a canopied bamboo daybed with lots of exotic pillows, a large, overstuffed chair and ottoman, a small game table, sisal flooring and a large painting of tropical birds.

"I wanted to give the homeowner an option, a place to go where they can get away from everything,'' he said.

Downstairs, the library offers a meditation in designing curve into an otherwise linear space. Interior designer Trish Wiley, whose company, Panache Interior Design, works with clients in Tampa and Sarasota, was influenced by a century-old girl's boarding school dorm in Manhattan that was recently turned into a show house.

"I have been thinking about life in a New York apartment, how there's a lot of furniture, but it doesn't feel jammed and cluttered,'' Wiley explained of her use of elliptical bookshelves and a round cocktail table that also provides storage. "I want this to be a contemporary media library room, where everything is round rather than vertical, a Zen space.''

In essence, it seemed, Wiley knew it was all just a matter of bringing the design of a beautiful show house full circle.

[Last modified March 16, 2006, 12:20:44]