An elegant upstate New York farmhouse shot through with rustic charm
When Billy Cotton was asked to take over the renovation of a remote 19th-century farmhouse near the hamlet of Delancey in upstate New York, he felt an immediate connection to the rugged landscape and clapboard architecture of the surroundings. Born in Boston and raised in Vermont, the typical architecture of New England was – and remains – deeply evocative for him: “That’s part of my affinity for the house,” Billy explains. It didn’t hurt that the clients were charming, either. “I saw pictures of the house and fell in love with it, and really fell in love with them. They were really fun, creative people.” And so he took the job.
From the beginning the idea of “Old-World finery” was central to the renovation; it comes up more than once when he talks about the project. Upstate New York is a part of the USA layered with history, once comprising part of the colonial frontier, and later scattered with boltholes for those seeking an escape from the smoke of New York City. The farmhouse is now one of those boltholes – built in 1854 amid five acres of rolling hills, it is almost as remote now as it was 150 years ago, set right in the centre of the heavily forested Catskill Mountains. “It’s three-and-a-half, four hours away from the city,” says Billy, “and an hour to a grocery store. It’s really, really rural.”
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Nonetheless, his clients, who worked in filmmaking and in fashion, wanted something cosmopolitan for the house. They had spent time in Paris and had a vision of French chic applied to their country getaway. And so the question for Billy became clear: how to create something with sophisticated continental interiors that would nonetheless sit well in this extremely remote corner of the rustic New York landscape?
Luckily, the clients were happy to give Billy free rein to shape the house to his vision. “They were like, ‘We’re going to trust you.’ That was the alchemy that created the house.” Billy describes the building as “very primitive”, with barely any insulation and old, original windows still in situ. “It’s one of those things that’s very rare to come across, especially in America, so we really wanted to keep the spirit of it, but also bring this elegance in.”
So he began with “a couple of big strokes”. In the downstairs living room, a fireplace had been installed in an odd place in the corner of the room; Billy immediately knew he wanted to rip the mantel off it to leave the raw brick exposed, making it into an austere visual centrepiece rather than an architectural aberration. “It gives it the kind of earthy quality of where we are,” he explains. A graceful vintage Venetian mirror hung above it added a touch of bella figura and further enhanced the fireplace as a focal point in the room. Billy then rearranged the kitchen, “massaging the cabinets” into a simple linear arrangement along one wall, and made executive decisions about which walls would be papered in Robert Kime and Zuber prints, and which would remain in their more raw, unadorned form.
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He also returned to the Old World – literally – to source pieces: the British Isles furnished a great swathe of the furniture pieces in the house. Billy credits a career-long engagement with English antiques to an old family friend and sourcer of pieces named Nan Mabon, who carved out a niche as the go-to supplier for antiques to Americans living in London. “She introduced me to Petworth, and Tetbury, and all of these great dealers,” he recalls, “Those people really taught me an enormous amount, and are still a huge part of my job.”
And so, after conceiving of the main living room downstairs in the house – pairing two inward-facing sofas with a long, low bookshelf to anchor the space – Billy reached out to dealers he knew across the Atlantic. “We found this bookcase that grounded the room, and then everything started building around that.” Trained in industrial design, he often designs and makes a lot of furniture himself, but this was a rare instance of a project in which “almost everything” was vintage or bought at auction. Roughly half of the furniture in the house comes from the UK, he adds, while other pieces are from further afield: Tunisian and Turkish carpets add pattern to the upstairs bedroom, while a pair of gilded and painted oak beds have their origins in Italy, with an African Kuba coverlet thrown over them. In the hallway, he hung a mid-century, tangerine-coloured Italian pendant light, which he points to as “an unexpected contrast note, that keeps the composition from devolving into a saccharine exercise in historical nostalgia”.
In this way, Billy brought international élan to the heart of the Catskills, while retaining the essentially American character of the upstate farmstead. It’s still rustic and humble without being folksy; sophisticated without being overwrought. It is, Billy says, “a cosseted refuge from the chaos of the city.”
Images extracted from ‘Billy Cotton: Interior and Design Work’ (Rizzoli)
1/15The white clapboard farmhouse near Delancey, New York was built in 1854.
Stephen Kent Johnson2/15An antique Japanese leather screen hangs above the Regency bookcase that Billy sourced in England in the living room. The screen and the sofas were sourced at Marie Haour Antiques. The bookshelf is from Debenham Antiques.
Stephen Kent Johnson3/15A vintage Venetian mirror sits above the original corner fireplace, whose brickwork Billy chose to leave exposed in a nod to the house’s more raw elements. The mirror is from Door Number 3; the pedestal is from Brownrigg Antiques in Tetbury.
Stephen Kent Johnson4/15The stairs are lined in wallpapers by Zuber, while the wall in the foreground is Robert Kime ‘Basilica’. A mid-century orange Italian lamp hangs in the hallway to give the space a contemporary touch and counterbalance the historic elements of the building.
Stephen Kent Johnson5/15The kitchen walls are lined in antique Delft tiles from Regts Delft Tiles, while French Directoire chairs surround the dining table in the foreground. The cabinets are painted in shades of white and Shaker red.
Stephen Kent Johnson6/15The window seat in the kitchen is covered in vintage French ticking. The sconces are by Jamb.
Stephen Kent Johnson7/15Throughout the house, Billy included built-in window seats and sleeping nooks, like this one in the kitchen, for a sense of cosiness. The French ticking fabric is from The Textile Trunk.
Stephen Kent Johnson8/15A nineteenth-century pastoral painting hangs above the dining area; the light fixture hanging above the Regency table is by Bertil Brisborg.
Stephen Kent Johnson9/15Like the stairway hall, the upstairs landing is papered in wallpaper by Zuber.
Stephen Kent Johnson10/15In the primary bedroom, the wallpaper is Robert Kime ‘Sunburst’. The chair is a 1960s Italian wicker chair, an the yellow Georgian cabinet is from Kate Thurlow Antiques.
Stephen Kent Johnson11/15The main bedroom is wallpapered in Robert Kime ‘Sunburst’, and has Indian block-printed fabric from Eleta on the slanted ceiling. The rugs are Tunisian and Turkish, while the gilded and painted Italian oak beds are dressed with an African Kuba coverlet.
Stephen Kent Johnson12/15A guest bedroom features a polychromatic Moroccan carpet, and window treatments of Le Manach fabric.
Stephen Kent Johnson13/15A second guest bedroom sports a curtain of vintage French ticking, a Mathieu Matégot side table, and Russian floral textiles.
Stephen Kent Johnson14/15In the same bedroom, a neoclassical mirror hangs on top of Sardinian fabric.
Stephen Kent Johnson15/15A fieldstone ramp leads to the upper level of a weathered hemlock barn.
