Fixture from South of Market. Ferrier incorporated pieces from the McAlpine Home collection, such as the Tavish étagère and Lotus Chamber bed, into a guest bedroom.
The McAlpine Home Fern Knuckle chaise lounge offers a place for respite in the guest room.
In the master bedroom, a 17th-century reproduction Italian iron bed by Gregorius Pineo takes center stage. The white-on-white crewel fabric is by Old World Weavers. The lamps were designed from late-19th-century oak carvings. “I have so much respect for the heart and soul Susan puts into every interior,” Prillaman says. “We had total trust.”
In the master bedroom, the landscape painting above the mantel is an 18th-century English oil on canvas. Ferrier took the original frame from the painting and hung it in the upstairs lounge, opposite.
To increase closet space in the circa-1920s house, Prillaman and Ferrier transformed a former sleeping porch into an organized space for her color-coordinated wardrobe, shoes, collection of hat stands and more. “I think of clothing as a backdrop for shoes and jewelry,” says Prillaman of her personal style. “The larger and more unique the jewelry is, the happier I am.”
While Prillaman and Ferrier took measures to make each room on the first floor conducive to entertaining company, upstairs the pair was careful to create a more private, comfortable retreat. In the TV lounge, complete with a custom sofa, Ferrier chose Benjamin Moore’s Copley Gray for the paint color to create a cocoon-like space.
A pecky cypress ceiling —the perfect textural counterpoint to tall, sleek cabinets— is the showstopper in the renovated kitchen. For the room renovation and space planning, Prillaman collaborated with Beth Barfield Designs. Ferrier made the space as refined as it is relaxing thanks to furniture selections like the MacCall table from MacRae, complete with McAlpine Home bar stools, and one of Prillaman’?s favorite pieces, McAlpine’?s flip-top highboy, topped with a sampling of her ceramic English water filter collection. The cabinets are painted in Farrow & French Gray. Appliances, Wolf and Sub-Zero.
A pecky cypress ceiling the perfect textural counterpoint to tall, sleek cabinets —is the showstopper in the renovated kitchen. For the room’s renovation and space planning, Prillaman collaborated with Beth Barfield Designs. Ferrier made the space as refined as it is relaxing thanks to furniture selections like the MacCall table from MacRae, complete with McAlpine Home bar stools, and one of Prillaman’s favorite pieces, McAlpine’s flip-top highboy, topped with a sampling of her ceramic English water filter collection. The cabinets are painted in Farrow & Ball’s French Gray. Appliances, Wolf and Sub-Zero.
A pecky cypress ceiling —the perfect textural counterpoint to tall, sleek cabinets is the showstopper in the renovated kitchen. For the room’s renovation and space planning, Prillaman collaborated with Beth Barfield Designs. Ferrier made the space as refined as it is relaxing thanks to furniture selections like the MacCall table from MacRae, complete with McAlpine Home bar stools, and one of Prillaman’s favorite pieces, McAlpine’s flip-top highboy, topped with a sampling of her ceramic English water filter collection. The cabinets are painted in Farrow & Ball’s French Gray. Appliances, Wolf and Sub-Zero.
An artfully arranged collection of creamware and pewter adds to the play between darks and lights in the dining room. “Susan is the best colorist in the business,” says Prillaman, who, after she had already enlisted Ferrier for the project, pored through a file of inspirational tear sheets only to find that most of them were the designer’s projects. Ferrier chose a midnight blue hue—Benjamin Moore’s Westcott Navy—for the room’s walls and ceiling to complement the gorgeous woods from Prillaman’s antiques. The chairs are upholstered in a damask by Nobilis.
An artfully arranged collection of creamware and pewter adds to the play between darks and lights in the dining room. “Susan is the best colorist in the business,” says Prillaman, who, after she had already enlisted Ferrier for the project, pored through a file of inspirational tear sheets only to find that most of them were the designer’s projects. Ferrier chose a midnight blue hue—Benjamin Moore’s Westcott Navy—for the room’s walls and ceiling to complement the gorgeous woods from Prillaman’s antiques. The chairs are upholstered in a damask by Nobilis.
After spotting an original Knole sofa that she, Prillaman and McAlpine fell in love with on a trip to England, Ferrier opted to design a similar piece for Prillaman’s living room. The high-sided sofa with drop-down arms, an upright back and nailhead trim has a commanding presence. Paint color, Revere Pewter by Benjamin Moore.
A University of the South uniform from Prillaman’s great grandfather—one of three Prillaman found in her grandmother’s attic—takes pride of place above the mantel, and was the starting point for Ferrier’s color palette. The pair of candlesticks were a souvenir from a buying trip that Prillaman took with Ferrier and architect Bobby McAlpine to Belgium.
Designer Susan Ferrier’s deft design hand—and balancing act—is evident in homeowner Mary Prillaman’s living room, where a collection of charcoal botanicals anchors an elegant seating arrangement that includes a commanding Holland & Company Chesterfield sofa. An upholstered screen frames it, adding texture and dimension to the space.
Antique clock faces rest atop a hide-covered console in the living room.
Floor-to-ceiling draperies add a sense of privacy to the light-and-bright sunroom, where built-ins hold a collection of Royal Doulton stoneware pitchers.
When you’re in the antiques business, each piece is personal. There’s an emotional connection, fond memory or unique story attached to every object. And when living and breathing fine design is your trade, as it is for Mary Prillaman, owner of MacRae and Holland & Company, it’s almost by default that you become an avid collector in the process.
Seventeenth- and 18th-century portraits, corner chairs, hat stands, English water filters, creamware, pewter—Prillaman’s collections are as numerous as they are exquisite. But they are also carefully curated, just like the company she keeps.
Enter Susan Ferrier of McAlpine Booth & Ferrier Interiors, to whom Prillaman had the pleasure of being introduced through a collaboration on a furniture line for MacRae with Ferrier’s colleague, architect Bobby McAlpine. A design dream team, McAlpine, Ferrier and Prillaman hit it off famously—and ultimately led to Prillaman enlisting the designer to become editor-in-chief of her most prized possessions for the refresh of her Buckhead home.
And where many designers might have been overwhelmed by the sheer spectrum of choices—Prillaman has a warehouse filled with benchmade pieces from her businesses as well as her own impeccable finds—Ferrier was nonplussed, committing herself to finding and using only pieces Prillaman could truly not live without, regardless of the period or style.
Of particularly sentimental value were a trio of University of the South uniforms, worn by her great-grandfather, which Prillaman found stuffed in a bag in her grandmother’s attic. After having the coats cleaned, repaired and preserved in shadow boxes, she knew she wanted the collection to play a role in her home’s redesign, but it was Ferrier who envisioned the uniforms’ blue-and-tan hues as the jumping point for the home’s palette.
Next, the designer’s task was to create a sophisticated but livable environment for this serious collector, without it appearing too much like a showroom. “When your life is about furniture, you have to be careful. In your own home, there must be a little bit of a departure,” says Ferrier. Even so, the pair looked at pieces in Prillaman’s lines that would be “good ambassadors in tying in the new with the old,” she says.
If there’s one room that best captures this delicate balance, it’s the dining room, where color, pattern and texture imbue the intimate space with a rich, multi-layered patina only Ferrier could accomplish. Here, a commanding Holland & Company dining table draws energy from skirted feminine chairs and a cowhide banquette, while floor-to-ceiling draperies, along with a floating mirror, add architectural structure.
It’s in the details, though, that Ferrier’s deft balance of old and new, light and dark, hard and soft, reigns. “When you’re working with a lot of different influences, it’s important to pay attention to where things are placed as you don’t want them to appear redundant or out of place,” she says. Instead, the designer imbued the house with a sense of rhythm, weaving Prillaman’s prized collections from room to room in such a way that they not only appear unified when separated, they also make the rooms feel crisp, clean, and above all, memorable. “From the moment you walk in, you can tell a really interesting person lives here,” Ferrier says.
LIVE THE LIFESTYLE Mary Prillaman shares a few of her favorite things
Collections: Antique water filters, corner chairs and maps of Paris.
Artists: Sally Mann, Bernd Haussman and Rinne Allen.
Linens: Thomas O’Brien for Target.
Cocktail: The Marie Antoinette at The Ritz London hotel.
Playlist: Wilco, Pylon and Lucinda Williams.
Films: Little Miss Sunshine, The Royal Tenenbaums and Great Expectations.
Weekend Reading: Finding Home by Bobby McAlpine.
Fashion: Marni, Emerson Fry and Matta.
Candle: Maura Peters’ Orange Jasmine.
Next Destination: Portugal.
Interior Design Susan Ferrier, McAlpine, Booth & Ferrier Interiors. (404) 501-9200; mcalpineboothferrier.com For the kitchen’s renovation and space planning, Prillaman collaborated with Beth Barfield Designs.
