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Adirondack Style |
Smokey Mountain Style |
It takes a while to
get there, up a winding road that seems to take you
back in time as well as up the mountain. When you
stop at a filling station, even the gas pumps are
vintage red and yellow cylinders.
Along the road, barns and
water towers lean at crazy angles, and you have the
sense that life in these mist-shrouded mountains
hasn’t changed much for two hundred years.
American country style still lingers on small farms
and in backwoods retreats. It’s in the spartan grace
of a Great Smokies town, or the luxurious rusticity
of a hundred year-old Adirondack resort.
But whether you picture yourself putting up
preserves on a cast-iron stove or sipping a highball
in a knotty-pine lodge, down-home American design
means unpretentious comfort and natural beauty.
Woodwork is a good place to begin. Walls and floors
of warm, plain pine boards, unfinished for a true
pioneer look or stained for a more refined feeling,
provide a backdrop for whatever homespun furnishings
and accessories catch your fancy. |
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Adirondack Bear
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Practical items like old-fashioned cookware, rag
rugs and antique quilts are both beautiful and
useful. Old farm and household implements have a
unique beauty, like the horse-drawn plow. A butter churn, a grain mill, an antique
meat grinder, and, of course, a copper kettle are
all good accent choices. Restored vintage ranges and
refrigerators have become more easily available in
recent years, and nothing says country like a
cast-iron potbelly heating stove. |
| If you’re looking more for a turn-of-the-century
“Great Camp” and less for a pioneer homestead, try
antlers above a stone fireplace, knotty pine
paneling, and (for the unsqueamish) hunting trophies
and motifs. A generous portion of luxury is
appropriate: exquisite lace curtains, a beautifully
restored old upright piano for evening sing-along.
Don’t forget cozy nooks with leather armchairs in
which to curl up with a book, and, if space permits,
multiple fireplaces. And bearskin rugs may have
fallen out of favor, but plush carpets scattered
across wood or stone floors will keep out the chill
mountain air. |
This antler framed mirror adds
interest
and is a guaranteed conversation starter! |
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Elk, Mt. Tacoma, Washington
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Meandering country walls made from
local stones establish boundaries as well as rustic,
country charm.
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