Living with antiques: Domestic Arrangements

In the bijou New Orleans apartment that decorator Thomas Jayne shares with his husband Rick Ellis, old things provide the bright backdrop to a gracious existence.

The author and guest editor of the January-February issue of ANTIQUES, Thomas Jayne, pictured in the mural room of his and Rick Ellis’s apartment, on the second floor of an 1830s Creole town house in New Orleans. The wallpaper, a collaboration between Jayne and de Gournay, New York, is based on illustrations by Cornelius Hugh DeWitt (1905–1995) for *The Story of the Mississippi* (1941) by Marshall McClintock (1906–1967). *Photograph by Paul Costello*.

Ever since I began to study design, I have read with interest a series in this magazine titled “Living with Antiques.” At first, I was inclined to joke about this title, secretly calling it “dying with antiques,” reflecting my opinion that most collectors of old things were themselves old and their rooms had a static quality that reflected their reluctance to truly live with their collections.

The mantel is a Creole type popular in nineteenth-century Louisiana. The over-mantel mirror is French, c. 1840. *Except as noted, photographs are by Kerri McCaffety*.

After studying at the Winterthur Museum, through its joint graduate program with the University of Delaware, I realized that Winterthur’s rooms, designed by collector Henry Francis du Pont, are spaces furnished with antiques that feel alive, special, individual, and even youthful. I learned much from those rooms.

The mural room transforms for all types of entertainments. The table is set with Old Paris porcelain, once typical of New Orleans and elsewhere in the American South.

The apartment in New Orleans where my husband and I live part-time represents to me the joys of a life with antiques. Located in a Creole town house built in the 1830s, our parlor-floor apartment is only a thousand square feet, enlarged somewhat by the original wrought-iron balcony that overlooks the old streets and the city’s distinctive cathedral, and certainly by the twelve-foot-high ceilings.

As seen in this detail, a probably southern bookcase, 1800–1850, in the apartment makes a wonderful setting for ephemeral decorative arts associated with New Orleans, such as masks, drinking tumblers, and the Victorian tea service from Jayne’s great-grandparents’ house in Muscatine, Iowa, on the Upper Mississippi River.

The main room of the apartment is the mural room. I have long admired nineteenth-century French scenic wallpapers, but I felt they were too grand to use in this modest space. So, we invented a twentieth-century version. Its scenes are based on illustrations from a favorite childhood book of mine, Marshall McClintock’s The Story of the Mississippi with illustrations by Cornelius Hugh DeWitt.

The clock from Jayne’s Father Time Mardi Gras costume, and an English Midlands statue of Fortitude, c. 1800, flank the fireplace in the pink room. *Costello photograph*.

Looking into the pink room from the mural room.

While historic scenic papers have a single horizon line, ours breaks this standard form with a great curving line, “forcing the perspective” and wrapping the space with one of the greatest of rivers, the mighty Mississippi.

The French Empire daybed in the pink room was used by the Duke of Windsor (1894–1972) when he was a house guest of socialite and philanthropist Jane Englehard (1917–2004). German carnival decorations, lithographs by C. Burckardt, Weissenburg, c. 1890s, hang on the wall behind.A portrait of Jayne by Don Bachardy (1934–), 2004, is at upper left.

Next to the mural room is the plainer pink room, which functions as a sitting room and guest room. Both rooms are furnished almost entirely with antiques, and after almost twenty years of active enjoyment here, we can attest to both the functionality and beauty of many old things.

French doors open on to the bedroom. The Spanish colonial style bed with its melon-shaped headboard is of recent manufacture, made by Harrison Higgins, Richmond, Virginia, after an original example in the collection of antiquarian Peter Patout.

Above hangs *Californian Vulture* from *Birds of America* (1827–1838) by John James Audubon (1785–1851), facscimile printed by the Old Print Shop, New York, 2005. The coverlet is mid-nine-teenth-century jacquard used by Jayne’s family in Dutchess County, New York.

The mural room is often rearranged for parties—from cocktails to dinners. Between gatherings, the chairs, in the old-fashioned custom, are placed along the walls. And in true New Orleans style, there is always about to be a party.

The pink room is furnished with an Empire daybed set against the wall, allowing guests to sit comfortably and converse with others seated in modern club chairs—a slight nod to contemporary comfort, although they are covered in antique toile.

The exterior of Jayne’s and Ellis’s town house is restored to its original paint colors.

The house’s enclosed workyard was replaced by a garden in the 1900s.

Each time I return to our apartment, I have the immediate feeling of being in a place that could be nowhere else, a place exemplifying the true value of living with antiques.