best in show
A mother-daughter team update a room in a York, Maine, designer showhouse
with a two-tone palette and natural elements
pairs add harmony to
the symmetry of a square
room. Above the fireplace
mantel (left), handsome
sconces establish the use
of silver accents repeated
in all lamp bases. At the
conversation area by the
bay window, twig chairs
pull up to a cushioned
bench positioned in front
of the window seat.
Michaele Boehm (below,
at right) and her
daughter Kacey Graham.
Written by ESTELLE BOND GURALNICK
Photographed by GORDON BEALL
When michaele boehm and kacey
Graham got the nod to decorate the
living room of the 18th annual Old
York Historical Society Decorator
Show House in York, Maine, they
were excited for all the right reasons.
“It wasn’t that it was a prominent room,” says Boehm. “We
were more thrilled because we’d both been totally bowled
over by its beautiful proportions. Empty as it was when we
first saw it, even without a bit of furniture, it had an inviting
aura, thanks to its lovely proportions and great light.”
To emphasize the room’s 17½-by- 17½ square footage,
Boehm and Graham, a mother-daughter design team based
in Bedford, New Hampshire, chose to make the walls a definitive statement by painting them a warm misty blue-gray,
a shade they custom-mixed to match the dupioni silk of the
curtains at the back windows. Set off by white in upholstery
and woodwork, the result is an unbroken, seamless look, “not
bold like black and white, but softly graphic,” says Graham.
