Weaving a Dream House
By Jennifer Haupt |
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As seen In:
The Seattle Times Magazine
April 2, 2000
A warm Bainbridge Island home is a tapestry
of its owner's loves and interests.
If a man's home is his castle, why shouldn't a woman's home be her sanctuary
- a shrine to honor the things she loves? For Annette Stollman, a
weaver living on Bainbridge Island, the house she built just over
a year ago is an homage to the things she has built her life around:
arts and crafts, animals and nature, family, books.
As you open the hefty front door, made from reclaimed Douglas-fir
timbers dating back to the late 1800's, it's immediately clear that
the main living space was designed as a work-place for Stollman. A
stately 60-inch loom and two spinning wheels are framed by shelves
of colorful yarn. The backdrop for the great room is an expansive
bay window that looks onto a meadow filled with Shetland sheep, providers
of wool for Stollman's fabric art.
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The main living space was designed as a workplace for Annette Stollman.
A stately 60 -inch loom and two spinning wheels are framed by shelves
of colorful yarn.
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Overhead are timber-framed cathedral ceilings with modified "cruck"
arches, a pre-medieval building form resulting from cutting a curved
tree in half and turning the halves together to form a Gothic arch.
The form was common in 12th-century French barns and English cathedrals.
While you're taking in the view, you are greeted by a gregarious Old
English Mastiff named Dakota, clearly the "master" of the house, followed
by three smaller dogs who beg him for a game of tag. They scramble
across the sparse furniture, an overstuffed couch and chair in the
corner. Their pillow beds are spread about on the acid-etched concrete
floor designed to be both rugged and refined. It's clear that this
home was built to accommodate both woman and beast.
I'm a real homebody, and all of my energies are in this house," says
64-year-old Stollman, whose children have left the nest. "It was designed
to be a tapestry of the elements of my life that are important to
me."
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Tansu-like drawers under the stairway are among Asian elements that
blend with the home's overall Arts and Crafts spirit.
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An intimate weaving
area is nestled in front of the bay window overlooking a pasture where
Shetland sheep graze. Overhead is a timber-framed cathedral ceiling
with modified "cruck" arch, common in 12th-century French barns and
English cathedrals. |
Stollman's home was built as a work of art, employing some of the same principles
that she uses in her own craft. Designers at Timbercraft Homes Inc.
in Port Townsend and the building contractor, Bluefish Fine builders
of Bainbridge Island, took inspiration from the work of architect
Bernard Maybeck, one of the premier California designers in the Arts
and Crafts movement of the late-19th and early-20th centuries.
"Maybeck was a master of blending European and Asian design elements
using the common language of wood craftsmanship," says Judith Landau,
co-owner of Timbercraft Homes. "All these finely crafted elements
work to create a picture of the homeowner's life, as well as create
an environment that encourages creativity and peace of mind."
Everything does indeed work together in the Stollman house. The European
architecture, English-style courtyard garden and sheep pasture mesh
seamlessly with the house's many Asian influences, which include sparse
wooden furnishings and stacked wooden, tansu-like drawers under the
stairway. The ginkgo-leaf cut out pattern in the winding railing that
leads to the loft bedroom is an affectionate gesture, recognizing
a design frequently used in fabrics during the Arts and Crafts period.
The house is a "U" shape, split into two wings: one where Stollman
lives (about 1,500 square feet) and another (about 1,000 square feet)
devoted to books and family. There, two guest bedrooms are linked
by a shared closet and bathroom to accommodate visits from her four
children and eight grandchildren. There's also a long wall of books
in the main hall, which is lighted in the evening and is dramatically
visible through the front window. |
"My books are a kind of personal history," says Stollman. "They chronicle
how my interests have evolved over time; I'm a rather eclectic person
and my library reflects that. I get interested in a subject - and
buy a bunch of books on that topic. That's how my library has grown
to be so large over time."
Stollman keeps two large shelves of books on weaving, spinning and
knitting in the great room. These she has collected over the past
40 years. She also keeps a cache of history books in the bedroom,
one of her favorite places to read. Sitting in bed in the evening,
when the ceiling timbers and warm gold walls are lit softly from the
living room below, Stollman can survey the wooden beams and arches
that surround her, as well as the trees that encompass the house.
Everything about this house speaks to a respect for, and integration
with, the natural beauty of the land it is built on. The earth-tone
walls, which have four layers of different glazes and paints, work
with the various shades of wood - cherry, pine and Douglas fir - to
envelop one with warmth. The rustic concrete floor, cut in squares
to look like tiles, adds to the warmth with radiated heat. All this
is balanced by the light streaming in through the wall of windows.
Stollman's home is located in the center of an eight-acre pasture
near the Bloedel Reserve, a 150-acre former private estate with a
bird marsh, English landscape, moss garden, refection pool, Japanese
garden and woodlands.
When she bought the property, it came with a conservation easement
permitting her to build on only 20 percent of it, with the rest remaining
natural - thus, the grazing pasture. "Buying this property was in
line with my general commitment to the environment and conserving
land," says Stollman, who had put a similar conservation easement
on the last property she owned. "I know that the land will remain
the same, even after I've lift it." |
The ginkgo-leaf cut-out pattern in the railing of the loft bedroom
is an affectionate gesture recognizing a design frequently used with
fabrics during the heyday of Arts and Crafts design. |
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