THE JOURNAL
PERFECTLY IMPERFECT
Charlotte Abrahams talks to New York via Palm Beach decorator and tastemaker Celerie Kemble about the imperfect art of home making
bowl, part of the acclaimed decorator and designer’s latest collection for home furnishing brand Arteriors. This caption is specific of course, but its suggestion of imperfection is a neat encapsulation of Kemble’s design philosophy. “It’s not perfection you should be after,” she says. “There is beauty in the faded and worn.” The day I speak to Kemble she is holidaying with her
‘A
children, 16-year-old Rascal, Zinnia, 14, and Wick, 11, at Playa Grande Beach Club, the extraordinary ‘vacation folly’ she has created on a mile-long stretch of beach in the Dominican Republic. Comprising three family houses, six bungalows and a communal Club House, it is a place they come back to as often as her schedule allows, somewhere the children can frolic in the waves and family and friends can gather round a bonfire.
ceramic centrepiece… doused in soft hand-applied beads for a unique design. Finish will vary.’ So reads the description of Celerie Kemble’s ‘Spitzy’ centrepiece
She takes me on a virtual tour of the ground floor. I
notice two things simultaneously. The mess of a family holiday – swimming towels flung, damp, on the sofas, a discarded sneaker or two cluttering the floor, books and chargers strewn across a coffee table – and a spirit- lifting beauty. Jungle flowers seem to sprout from the ceiling (they turn out to be lights made by Dominican design studio Neno Industrial), latticework fan lights splinter the tropical light into shifting patterns on the tiled floor, bright ikat prints mix with faded florals, and wicker sofas juxtapose against flashes of tarnished metal. It is a cacophony of pattern, and colour, texture and treasures and even through my computer camera, I can sense the joy. I feel a strong urge to kick off my shoes, mix myself a margarita and add my own beach towel to the pile. “This project was me creating a new home for my
kids, in-laws and friends,” Kemble explains. “I find infinite variety restful, and Playa Grande is in the jungle where everything is lush and overgrown so ‘too much’ was an important theme here.”
Kemble works hard to avoid a signature style, but
few other designers do maximalism as triumphantly as she does. The secret, she says, is in the mix of eras, styles and materials, a lesson she learned from her mother, and now business partner, the legendary interior decorator Mimi McMakin. “I don’t
think I get any
credit for self-direction,” she laughs. “I grew up in a deconsecrated Episcopalian church in Palm Beach that was a monument to romantic chaos. We gave up playing hide and seek in the living room because there was so much junk in there you could literally lose a child for year. My bedroom was octagonal with shingled walls and the Pink Porch was all light, mirror, wicker and pink air. I still think it’s the prettiest room ever.” The Old Church, as it’s known locally, was design
school as well as home. Kemble has no formal design training (she went to Harvard and then spent three years working in film production before joining McMakin’s firm Kemble Interiors as an intern in the late 1990s), but living in this extraordinary house gave her a deep understanding of the power of design to
OPPOSITE, LEFT TO RIGHT: At Celerie Kemble’s home in the Dominican Republic, hammocks for afternoon reading rock in the breeze. Built for the tropical climate, the house
features deep verandas, folding plantation shutters and lacy tragaluz transoms above the windows and doorways to let in sunlight and fresh air. BELOW: A rope of shells alongside glassware the colour of seaglass suggests treasures found on a beach walk, dressing up the informal dinner table
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