Inspiration Lane

Alpine Interiors

Painted timber, limewash, stove culture, textile weight, and mountain light.

An alpine stube reads as social climate before it reads as decoration. Hand-troweled lime over a lime ground, fumed larch silvered to pewter, painted timber benches built into the wall, a Sommerhuber stove in the corner that holds the room from October to May.

The stube as the working room

Hand-troweled lime over a lime ground, fumed larch wainscot silvering to pewter, painted timber benches built into the wall. The room is laid out around the kachelofen rather than the window. Light arrives second; warmth and the bench geometry arrive first. This discipline runs four centuries deep in the alpine building tradition.

Ceramic stove culture

Sommerhuber in Steyr for the historic tile palette and the custom glaze runs. Tonwerk monoliths out of Lotzwil in canton Bern for the contemporary case. The stove still sets the social temperature in a working chasa. We size the firebox to the wood the family will actually keep dry through a winter.

Textile weight and color

Holland and Sherry wool flannel curtains in loden, Belgian linen at the bed, horsehair on a dining chair, and the red wool that anchors a winter chamber. The fabric does the work the wall color cannot do at altitude.

Sgraffito and the south wall

A single sgraffito panel can date a house to the eighteenth century without a single other decorative gesture. We cut by hand in lime mixed on the bench that morning.

How we carry this lane to Connecticut

A Sommerhuber stove vented through a Litchfield fieldstone chimney. Hand-troweled lime over a lime ground on a New Canaan library wall. The discipline travels intact when the workshops travel with it. Call (203) 651-8649 to walk this lane through your brief.