Mary Engelbreit Home Companion - East Coast Eclectic


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Text by Mary Forsell • Styling by Kathy Curotto • Photography by Gridley & Graves

It was a dark and stormy night in spring 2003. Daryl Duarte, vice president of information services at a healthcare company, and David Schiffer, a landscape architect, were at a dinner party when they heard that a nearby home they admired was coming on the market. Veteran house hunters who knew what they wanted, they sealed the deal with a handshake that very evening. “The owners, who were parents of a friend, turned over the keys right away,” David recalls.

Buying the place was the easy part. Within an intense, 13-week period, they replaced the roof and the pipes, redid the electric, added central air, sanded all the floors, and replastered the many-windowed, light-filled space.

(a) The 1928 home is an excellent example of a short-lived, early 20th-century architectural style known as storybook colonial. (b) With a background in catering, Daryl is the kitchen maestro. (c) Modern sofas mix with Mission furnishings and art pottery in the living room of Daryl Duarte and David Schiffer’s Fairfield, Connecticut, digs. “All good styles match,” David says. (d) Mica lampshade was a $3 find.

“ The house was too pretty and airy to bring in a ton of stuff,” says David, a minimalist who likes a clean-lined, modern look. Daryl, on the other hand, had to edit down his voluminous stash of pottery, figurines, books, and sporting paraphernalia. “I was the nutty collector,” he admits. “I finally winnowed it down to the best of the best.”

(e) Welcoming details include a flea market bowl with fluted edges and (f) a coat stand holding Daryl’s childhood sweater, hand-knit by his mother, along with ladies’ parasols with Lucite handles. (g) The medieval-looking arched door in the entryway was stripped of an unbecoming coat of white paint. (h) Brown-panel Roseville pottery is one of Daryl’s passions. (i) Circa 1964 painting by Alfred Duarte, Daryl’s dad, adds a blast of color. The disco-era light fixture on the vintage walnut credenza came from the local dump.

(j) David snagged this yellowware bowl at the local Goodwill. “I thought, ‘Finally, he’s coming around to my way of thinking!’” Daryl says. (k) Daryl’s maternal grandmother bought the museum-quality lace tablecloth on the dining table at a tag sale 30 years ago. (l) Sideboard includes streamlined Russel Wright and Frankoma pitchers.

(m) In the breakfast area, the double-sided “painting” is actually an old English pub sign depicting a bricklayer at work. It came from the renowned Brimfield Antique Shows in Massachusetts. Shopping together, Daryl and David found the pedestal table by Finnish modernist Eero Saarinen, one of the few new things they bought. (n) Table setting of art pottery and Bakelite-handled utensils. (o) Greenware mixing bowls by various makers.

When they first encountered it, the kitchen was a pastiche of 1970s cabinetry. The only clue to the original look of the room was what remained of the old wooden butler’s pantry.
“ The cabinets went to the ceiling, so that was our starting point,” David says. “They were built on site in the 1920s and have true divided glass. They’re not like the ones in most new kitchens, where it looks like someone threw a box at the wall. There was no way we would change them.” To complement but not match the look, they commissioned additional classic white cabinets topped by crown molding.

Undecided about whether to have a kitchen island, the ever-resourceful duo asked a friend who is a display artist to create a cardboard mock-up. “It was a great test run,” Daryl notes. “We really liked having it, and made up our minds that we needed an island.”

(p) Daryl’s collections of Fiesta and Vistosa dishware mingle with David’s coveted enamelware pots by mid-century Norwegian designer Catherine Holm. (q) A quilted stainless- steel backsplash lines the wall above the range. “There’s something so retro-industrial about it,” Daryl says. Wall paint, Benjamin Moore. Range, DCS. (r) It’s a stainless-steel smorgasbord in the kitchen, where the countertops, appliances, and accents are made of this timeless material, contemporary and sentimental at the same time. Dishwasher, Miele. Faucet, Jado. (s) Fire-King cups and saucers are the heavy-duty stuff of diners and Elk’s lodges, not the home pattern.

Most of the overflow from Daryl’s collections has either been banished to the basement (a.k.a. “the prop room”), or is displayed in the sitting area of the guest bedroom. “A lot of the really great things I have and love I got running at full speed through Brimfield at dawn,” he explains. “Nowadays, we’ve slowed down the pace and just stroll through the flea markets at nine. We both have to agree on an item before bringing it into our home.”

(t) In the third-floor guest bedroom, a queen-sized Arts and Crafts-inspired bed by Rhode Island artist Eric Swanson sports inlaid tulip details. (u) The nostalgic bedside deer lamp belonged to Daryl’s maternal great-grandmother. (v) A leather Doberman is a funky find. (w) Woven Beacon blankets, also known as camp blankets, are getting harder to find and must be in absolutely perfect condition (no holes or wear on cotton bindings) to meet Daryl’s standards.

A blast from the past:
Casual art pottery, toys, books with intriguing covers, decoys, and even a violin create an homage to Daryl’s former collection-clogged apartment. (x) Photographs on the middle shelf depict his maternal grandparents on their wedding day.