Decorating & Design
June 9, 2021
The Maine House Captures The Beauty Of East Coast Style
Looking for a dreamy summer read to take to the family cottage? Take a gander at The Maine House by photographer Maura McEvoy and art director Basha Burwell, with text by Kathleen Hackett. For four years and over 3,000 miles, Maura and Basha traveled throughout Maine, ferrying across bays and reaches, braving dubious dirt roads and strolling seaside towns in search of what artist Jamie Wyeth once described as a quality of life that is singular and unique. Scroll down for a peek inside this inspiring book!
These are not designer houses; they are homes created by the people who live in them, distinctive for their ingenuity, originality and fierce individuality. Many are unchanged, inhabited by generations of the same family; some are ingenious conversions.
Basha (centre) and Maura (right) went searching for a slice of New England life, travelling across Maine to capture the spaces of real people, from artists to writers, farmers and fishermen. Kathleen (left) helped craft the text for the book, a visual journey through saltwater farms and fish shacks to stately stone houses and cozy coastal cottages, all in an effort to preserve the Maine that Maura, Basha and Kathleen grew up adoring.
Maura’s charmingly named “Back of The Moon” holiday home in Southern Maine remains largely unchanged since 1911. “The original kitchen faced the house next door; I re-sited it to take advantage of a view of the tidal marsh,” she says.
High Head was built in 1937 using granite, spruce, fir and white pine harvested on the property.
A brick parquet floor and granite walls at High Head fit seamlessly into the rugged Maine landscape.
Photographer and lighting designer Chris Baker and his wife, Odette Heideman, a literary editor and ceramicist, fell for an 1850s Cape while visiting a friend Down East several summers ago. Odette’s childhood bed fills the sleeping loft in the barn, which is also used to host summer dinner parties.
The 1740s Cape clapboard farmhouse was originally the homestead of a working dairy farm. The owners (he is a chef) stripped the interior raw, left the floors and the beams that way, and painted the walls the purest white, then filled it with simple, functional furniture.
Some might have opted to add a dormer to make for more headroom in the bedroom, but the owners deferred to the Cape’s original design.
The homeowners of this Cape cottage sought to honor the bones by exposing them — and left the imperfections to celebrate its legacy.
The owner of this bunkie (containing a guest room, bathroom and office) prefers to surround herself with the fruits of her travels. Southeast Asia, India and Morocco are favorite destinations.
“Maine chooses you,” says Sharon Mrozinski, one half of the 30-year partnership that is the shop Marston House. Together with her husband, Paul, she has built an international clientele of interior designers and devotees of the vintage French linens, silver, furnishings and objets that bear the hallmarks of the pair’s adopted home state. The kitchen brings to life the offerings of their shop, located downstairs.
Birds, nests and eggs show up everywhere in the Mrozinskis’ lives, as seen in this early American cupboard.
In this former Baptist church, the narthex has become a stage (and kitchen), though the act of cooking and eating in the vast space can feel like performance in itself.
Works by artist friends fill the lobster-red living room of artist Dan Dowd.
A ladder designed for picking apples leads to a loft space over the library in this circa-70s, 800-square-foot house.
Maria Berman and Brad Horn, founders of the New York City-based architectural firm Berman Horn Studio, took inspiration from the tradition of painted surfaces that defines old New England homes, adding a touch of gloss so that the floor reflects all of that glorious light.
Maria, who is also an art conservator with a specialty in textiles, uses them to inject color into the guest bedroom, separated from the main house by a screened porch.