Built at the turn of the century, Marshcourt is one of architect Edwin Lutyens s most notable English country houses. Designer Robert Couturier

Transcription

1 Built at the turn of the century, Marshcourt is one of architect Edwin Lutyens s most notable English country houses. Designer Robert Couturier recently gave the home s interiors a stylish dressing up. For details see Sources.

2 ELEMENTS OF SURPRISE In the hands of designer Robert Couturier, a proper English manor by architect Edwin Lutyens gets a smart, sophisticated, and slightly daring update TEXT BY ANTHONY GARDNER PHOTOGRAPHY BY TIM BEDDOW PRODUCED BY HOWARD CHRISTIAN 149

3

4 Mmarshcourt, hidden in the hampshire, england, landscape 75 miles to the southwest of London, is nothing if not eccentric. To begin with, it is built of chalk, a material that had not been in regular use for two centuries at the time of its construction in the early 1900s and certainly not for a 12-bedroom country house. Inside, its architect, Edwin Lutyens, creatively blended Tudor and Jacobean features (paneled rooms, carved staircases, mullioned windows) with neoclassical details (marble columns, elaborate plasterwork ceilings). And now, in the hands of New York based interior designer Robert Couturier, the home has become more singular still. My natural tendency would be to look at Lutyens s books and think you have to have Elizabethan or neo- Gothic furniture here, he says. But then it would become very boring. We soon realized that contemporary furniture would jolt the house to life. Above: The library, with its framed view of the dining room, contains a 1940s Fritz Henningsen armchair upholstered in goat leather and an antique wing chair in silk damask by Claremont. Opposite: The library s rippling light, suspended from the original plasterwork ceiling, is by Ingo Maurer. The vintage lounge chairs are by Vladimir Kagan; the velvet club chairs were custom made, and the large ottoman is covered in a Sultanabad carpet. ARCHDIGEST.COM 151

5 The family who bought Marshcourt two and a half years ago agreed, and worked closely with Couturier on the decor (previous owners had already updated the heating and plumbing systems). They understood that the house had to have a personality, the designer says. We live in the 21st century, not the 1920s. It s a classic country house looking into the future. One of Lutyens s best-known creations, Marshcourt was built in 1904 for a stockbroker and sportsman named Herbert Johnson. The layout of the residence and its gardens, the latter designed with the architect s favorite collaborator, Gertrude Jekyll, was determined partly by Lutyens s love of surprises and partly by the site. The dwelling faces north on a spur overlooking the River Test, with the central block tucked back between two projecting wings. The ground drops away sharply on the west and south sides but rises on the east, terrain that inspired a lively multilevel garden of hedged and balustraded terraces echoed inside by corridors with galleries and half-landings arranged to provide a feeling of intimacy. People say that it s a very big house, but it doesn t feel big, Couturier observes. Lutyens s genius was combining grandeur with coziness. Given Marshcourt s scale, the entrance hall is not what you expect: It has a fine limestone floor and a plasterwork ceiling, but its dimensions are low and narrow. So when you enter a library that is almost twice the entrance hall s height, the effect is spectacular; and when you step out onto the lawn and look at the enormous rear façade, inset with magnificent leaded windows and topped by towering redbrick barley-twist chimneys, you realize that the house has a cannily withholding quality, delaying its moments of greatest drama until after you ve passed through. Couturier shares Lutyens s playfulness and fondness for mixing styles and eras. The first hint of this comes right in the entrance hall, where a steel chair by Ron Arad stands in one corner and a pink cardboard chair by Frank Gehry in another. Couturier s most daring statement, however, is in the library, where a huge, gold-color, ribbon-shaped ceiling light by Ingo Maurer stretches from one end of the room to the other. The Above, from left: In the drawing room, the patinated-steel Cerberino table by Maurizio Cattelan is flanked by a pair of Victor Courtray rush-seat chairs and lit by a circa-1960 French floor lamp. The dining room s brass-and-frostedglass light fixture is a 1964 design by Gio Ponti, the oak-and-bronze table is by Hervé Van der Straeten, and the vintage chairs are by Carlo di Carli. 152 ARCHDIGEST.COM

6 The custom-made Georgian-style wing chairs in the library alcove are upholstered in a hand-embroidered fabric from Robert Kime; the pendant lamp is by Maurer, and the TG-10 sling chairs and marble Angelo Mangiarotti table are vintage. archdigest.com 153

7

8 The charmingly antique gardens by Gertrude Jekyll, a frequent Lutyens collaborator, offer sweeping views of the Hampshire countryside. Below: In the sunken garden, rows of boxwood line a lily pond. Opposite, clockwise from top: A herringbone brick path passes under a rose-covered pergola. Marshcourt, with its leaded windows and barley-twist chimneys, is most impressive when viewed from the rear. A row of terra-cotta amphorae under climbing grapevines. 155

9 light had to be shipped all the way from Hong Kong and fitted by a team from Germany. We were all thinking, If we re making a mistake, what are we going to do? Couturier says. But it made the structure of the room more what it is, more exciting. The focus of frequent weekend entertaining, the library is also central to the other ground-floor reception areas, with the dining room on one side and drawing room on the other. The dining room s glory is its rich walnut paneling, which spreads up from the walls to frame part of the ceiling a circle of plaster fruit and foliage whose center Couturier has brightened with gilding and a Gio Ponti brass light fixture from In the nearby billiard room, an extraordinary carved-chalk table (now accompanied by a burgundy Zaha Hadid sofa) takes pride of place; the ballroom, a Lutyens addition from the 20s, is dominated by a great mullioned and transomed window, which is ingeniously balanced by an identical mirror. Here and elsewhere, Couturier had the original light fixtures painstakingly reproduced, Left: The billiard room s Zaha Hadid sofa for Sawaya & Moroni and pair of vintage Italian armchairs complement a reproduction by Lutyens Furniture & Lighting of the original billiard-table light. Opposite, from top: The ballroom, added to Marshcourt in the 20s, features chandeliers reproduced from the originals. The French sea-green vases arrayed across the kitchen counter and breakfast table are 50s Primavera. 156 ARCHDIGEST.COM

10

11

12 relying on period photographs of the newly built house that were published in the magazine Country Life. The designer s favorite space is the master bedroom upstairs, where he has boldly painted the paneling in shades of white. I m not very reverential, he admits. I don t think you should let the house dictate what you re going to do. The paint makes the room incredibly light and airy, neither masculine nor feminine, but very soft. White raffia-embroidered curtains and monochromatic textured rugs enhance the buoyant, sophisticated air. In the garden, there is still restoration to be done. The bones of Gertrude Jekyll s design survive the exquisite sunken garden, the long begonia walk, the pergolaed rose and vine walks, the herringbone redbrick paths, and the boxwood and yew hedges. But her planting records have been lost, so there is no way of precisely replicating the original. Not that Marshcourt s owners are unduly worried. Like Lutyens, they have discovered the delight of using in Couturier s phrase elements from the past, but in a different language. Clockwise from top left: The master dressing room includes a 50s Ponti desk and chair and a circa-1910 dressingtable mirror. A bath, with an expansive leaded window. In the tiled bathroom, the handblown-glass ceiling light by Lutyens Furniture & Lighting is a reproduction of the original. Opposite, from top: A guest room features a 40s mirror by FontanaArte and curtains of a brocade by Christopher Hyland. The master bedroom s custommade four-poster was inspired by a 70s design by Maria Pergay, and the Jean Royère sofa beneath the window is covered in a mohair by Dedar; the 60s Pierre Paulin lounge chair is upholstered in an Edelman leather. ARCHDIGEST.COM 159