European-Style Manor

Project: European–Style Manor
Designer: Laura Ramsey Engler, ASID
Firm: Ramsey Engler Ltd., 1201 Currie Ave. N., Mpls., 612-339-9494

For a large, European–style country manor situated on a rolling green patch in a rural setting, Laura Ramsey Engler designed a formal living room and stately entrance gallery. The homeowners—avid philanthropists and entertainers—wanted a place conducive to gatherings of friends and colleagues. They also wanted a room filled with worldly accouterments conveying history and lending age to their newly constructed home.

Working with the architects from concept through construction to completion, Ramsey Engler influenced the interior, complementing the house’s architectural style and creating a room both intimate and grand. “Though the house is cohesive in overall color and patterning throughout,” says Ramsey Engler,  “we gave the room a very specific raison d’etre. It was the only space in the house conceived for entertaining.”

From the antique Hudson River School oil painting to the Aubusson–style rug to the scene-stealing gold and crystal chandelier, the color palette of the room is a more subdued version of the pigments found throughout the rest of the home. Chairs upholstered in antique rose velvet, a cream brocade sofa punctuated by pale green, and walls in dusty gold combine to create a room that is both striking and sublime.

In addition to the color scheme, the formal room shares key architectural elements with the rest of the house, including woodwork, limestone flooring, and curvilinear ceiling designs. The structured architectural style lends congruency and strength to the room, cutting the elegance and humbling the space.

Knowing that antique furnishings would we be lost in the large-scale design of the home, Ramsey Engler instead turned to currently produced furnishings with good bones and to sumptuous velvets and brocades. The accessories, including Aubusson flat-weave tapestries flanking the fireplace and antique porcelain pieces lining the mantel, add to the old-new European theme.  Carefully balancing the old and the new, the elegant and austere, resulted in a room worthy of the most haute fetes.