Showing posts with label Carol Freedman Design. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Carol Freedman Design. Show all posts

Monday, October 15, 2012

Haute from a Tote

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Q&A with Carol Freedman of Carol Freedman Design
By Beth Herman

Celebrated for the abundant colors that define her work, interior designer Carol Freedman of Carol Freedman Design spoke with DCMud about an unusual commission: designing a house around the colors in a tote bag.

DCMud: So much of your world is about the unabashed use of color, accordingly what made the redesign of this residence different?

Freedman:  The inspiration for this 8,000 s.f. Bethesda house was a tote bag that the client really loved. It had geometric patterns of leaves: a rust leaf; turquoise leaf; an olive leaf; a caramel leaf; a black leaf. And her color preferences were also deeper than many I’ve used before, as exemplified in the tote which was our canvas.

DCMud: So how did the tote manifest itself in the home?

Freedman: To begin with, there are three floors, and the back of the house faces dense forest with a beautiful woodland view. We started in the great room with a large custom round patterned Odegard rug from Nepal. I then found this geometric fabric that picked up all of her colors and decided it would be great to use a fair amount of it, but not too much to overpower the room. So we used solids for the base of the couch and the chairs, applying the fabric for all the sofa’s throw pillows and back pillows. A complementary floral fabric from the same company is on some chairs, which pick up all those beautiful colors.

DCMud: In a previous story we did together, the inspiration for a home came from a painting. Though this home’s design was predicated on a tote bag, what about the spirited artwork in so many of the rooms—particularly the diptych in the living room?

Freedman: We wanted some really dynamic art on the walls, and my client and I fell in love with Susan Finsen who does exquisite work at the Torpedo Factory Art Center in Alexandria. This was a custom commission we did, based on one of her previous designs, where she employed our colors with her artistic sense.

DCMud: The home’s master bedroom also appears to reflect the tote’s theme.

Freedman: I found the rug first, which picked up a lot of the same colors I used in the great room. The client already had the custom wood furniture, so I wanted a color on the walls that would make the furniture sing. We used turquoise from the tote, and then found this wonderful Duralee geometric pattern with turquoise and orange in it. Though many clients would be afraid to use such a bold pattern, this client was daring enough to use it on the window treatments. My favorite kind of person! The fabric on the bed is Donghia—more subtle with intricate designs that complemented the bold area rug.

DCMud: What about the art which, in the best sense, appears almost indistinguishable from the space—as if it was born there.

Freedman: It’s another piece by Susan Finsen—a spectacular artist in our region.

DCMud: How did you design spaces for family fun in this residence?
Freedman: Because the game room is adjacent to the great room, we used a deeper caramel color (seen in the tote bag) which flatters the rich-looking pool table. The client already had a suspended art deco light fixture. She and her family are avid baseball fans, and coincidentally Susan Finsen had designed these silkscreens of baseball fields around the country, so she custom colorized them for this space.

DCMud: Embracing your color addiction, it seems you might be drawn to D.C. spaces that speak to this.

Freedman: One of my favorite parts of D.C. is the area of 14th and U Streets. I absolutely love jazz, both of my sons are jazz musicians, and the area is riddled with jazz clubs. We also love the great restaurants there, particularly Masa 14 and Estadio. What I love about Masa 14 is the juxtaposition of natural wood finishes, brick and metal, and the use of black, with a pop of red in the simple pendant light fixtures. It’s got that urban modern aesthetic going on with exposed metal ductwork. It feels hip, modern and earthy all at the same time.

photos courtesy of Anice Hoachlander

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

The Nude That Ruled the Roost

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By Beth Herman




Peppering her design discourse with words like "fun," "vigor," "whimsy," "syzygy," and definitely "comfort," above all interior designer Carol Freedman of Carol Freedman Design lives for color.

"I use it in abundance and have the courage to use it a variety of ways,” Freedman said, referencing her own Bethesda, Md. living room with its lush blue and purple color palette (think sky; sapphire; peacock; blueberry; robin’s egg; lavender; lilac; morning glory; grape).

A former environmental lobbyist, Freedman traded issues of the great outdoors for items found in great interiors, having come to design almost by birthright. Daughter of a professional interior designer, she achieved her first total room redesign (her bedroom) at age 13, and went on to reinterpret college friends’ dorm rooms with generous color, bedding and accessories. Both a quilter and artist, Freedman also studied drafting and drawing in landscape architecture classes, providing for a confluence of influences in her current—since 1994—career.

Of the residences she has transitioned from boring to beaming, Freedman said, “I think ensconcing yourself in a colorful, vibrant environment is a great way to live.” Citing everything from the color CPR and redesign of a home an architect had saddled with incongruent tones, to a client’s favorite teal, olive, caramel and rust-hued tote bag that was brought to her as the basis for a home’s redesign and color challenge, Freedman said her greatest joy comes from creating rooms from a single object or idea. “I really live for that,” she said.

Notes on a nude

In Chevy Chase, a quiet but spectacular heirloom painting of a nude in a 3,500 s.f. bungalow-style home was the catalyst for a redesign of the residence’s living and dining spaces—and family room. Rubenesque in physique with decidedly gold, bronze and copious olive tones, the painting was “incredibly evocative,” Freedman recalled. While she’d not worked with those colors before, the designer said she was nevertheless thrilled to use the artwork as the inspiration for the redesign of the home.

Accordingly, Freedman upholstered a loveseat and sofa, respectively, in olive and sage. Referencing the robust nude and desiring “sexy, shapely, interesting furniture,” the vintage loveseat is by enduring New York modernist Vladimir Kagan, and like the model in the painting, is broad and curvy. It’s also truly comfortable. “When you sit in these spaces, though they may not be huge, they’re very cozy and comfortable, which is something for which I always aim,” the designer affirmed. Accent pillows in sage, olive and rust, and a rust-colored plush chair from France, augment the space. To add texture, both the chair and especially an ottoman coffee table are made from woven, organic materials, and a cream-colored shag rug turns up the wow on warp and weft. A Donghia side table beneath the painting has shapely legs, a curved top with a ruffled quality and a gilt edge, reflecting the artwork’s anatomy, tones and also its gilt frame.

In the dining room, accessed through pocket doors emblematic of the home’s prodigious wood detail, deep rust walls provide a sense of depth and intimacy – the color teased through from the living room where it is found in the pillows and plush chair. Gold ultrasuede dining table chairs, both durable and functional in light of the household’s growing children, complement a heavy, pale pickled oak dining table by Birdman. An intricately-grained Berman Rosetti wood buffet flanks a wildly colorful patterned rug from Nepal.

All in the family (room)

With a vital, active young family, the residence’s family room became a hub for fun and color. Butter yellow walls provided a canvas for a bright, vintage flapper-era poster that the homeowner, whom the designer said has a “keen eye for art,” found at an antique poster store in Georgetown. In this room, though the art was not the driver (actually, the sofa came first), its colors are redolent both of the living and dining spaces and the poster. A soft, cozy, durable sectional sofa, which Freedman describes as “somewhere between periwinkle and violet,” is accompanied by a yellow gold leather Ligne Roset chair— sleek with clean lines but “very sit-able and comfortable,” the designer said. A whimsical gold, rust, black and blue rug picks up the colors of the room – including circular black tables—in its presentation of stripes and dots.

“When I saw all the dots in the rug, that’s when I decided to do all the fun, round pillows, so they sort of jump off the carpet and onto the sectional,” Freedman explained. Banks of three-quarter length windows across the room bathe the room in light, and a ceiling painted a pale sky blue helps open the space.

Another client, who was extremely color-shy, ultimately told the designer that her bold use of hues was “a revelation”—one that prompted a visceral reaction and changed his entire experience of a long, dark winter. It’s a message she continues to carry to clients about the joy of color. And though that infectious feeling caused her to fail a middle school project on design because she and a friend couldn’t stop laughing during the orals, clearly Freedman has persevered nevertheless.

 

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