Turner’s villa, she says, like Turner herself, went by quite a few “incarnations” earlier than buying her present character, wherein grandeur is balanced by informality. “An ideal inside ought to mix collectively,” she says. “Once I see one thing I really like – a bit of furnishings, a murals – I by no means measure, I by no means hesitate, I simply purchase it. Ultimately I am going to discover a place for it. I’ve robust style – and enormous pantries. I’ve all the time needed and want to rework my atmosphere, as a result of adorning is my first response to loss and turmoil; settle, acquire – create a personal universe. I used to be a bit lady when my dad and mom separated, and I moved in with family members and claimed a again room of their home. I introduced a bedspread from house and some treasures. Despite the fact that it was freezing within the winter and sweltering in the summertime—and no greater than a closet—I made it my very own. And that is what I all the time did on tour: rearrange the resort furnishings, paint the ugly footage Nevertheless it took me too lengthy to get issues good in a home of this scale Lastly I spotted I wanted skilled assist, the proper for me.”
After a trip in Aspen, Colorado, the place she stayed within the stunning Neo-Baroque mansion of her pals Jim and Betsy Fifield (see Architectural summary, March 1999), Turner contacted their designers, Stephen Sills and James Huniford. From their first assembly, she “felt instinctively” that she may work with them, and he or she, says Huniford, “who all the time beloved her music instantly adored her.”
“I allow them to attempt issues.” Turner laughs. “They by no means push. I’ll say to them: sure, let’s do it; no thanks, I have been there – we work from feeling. It is like mixing a CD.”
“The boys,” as she affectionately calls them, have change into the younger outdated masters of inside design during the last decade, famed for patrician interiors that combine antiques of lofty provenance with furnishings from the nice Modernist and Artwork Deco designers with a meticulous sense for historical past. Their penchant is for classicism, though they emphasize that “each project is completely different, as a result of our job is to interpret how a shopper desires to reside.” “Design encompasses tradition, instinct, craftsmanship and a really perfect of transparency, which I can greatest evaluate to the artwork of literary translation,” says Sills. “Your sensitivity works like a prism. Working with Tina, who’s a born decorator, it was actually about serving to her discover her personal voice – to precise her personal fashion – fairly than drive ours on us. We visited museums collectively, went buying on the quai Voltaire in Paris, exchanged books and concepts – which Tina accepted or rejected because it suited her – and helped edit her collections. However she was the brains behind this home: it’s her personal invention.”
