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"There is tension in decorator Thomas Jayne's work. It is like the tension of a string on a violin. Necessary. Calibrated. Precise. When I see work like this, my mind wanders beyond the rooms, beyond the pictures, and I wonder about the process.\n\n\"A lot of design today has high contrast,\" says Jayne, from his New York studio, where he is seated at a Saarinen table before his enviable library of design books. \"A room needs contrast to make it work for me, but the contrasts should have subtleties.\" Subtlety, according to Jayne, is pairing a shiny, bright-blue Parsons table with antique Portuguese chairs and traditional wallpaper in a dining room. It may sound as if the room, which is in a client's Philadelphia townhouse (AD, July 2011), would have a lot of jump, but it is expertly balanced. Jayne's addition of classical columns as a screen provides definition to the space. And the absence of a rug is quite intentional. The room doesn't need it. It is complete.\n\nJayne, whose r\u00E9sum\u00E9 boasts experience at Winterthur, MoMA, the Cooper-Hewitt, and Parish-Hadley, is highly trained in both architecture and the history of the decorative arts. His work reflects that historic foundation, but his most interesting rooms have a distinctly modern sensibility.\n\nThe shiny, bright-blue Parsons table in the Philadelphia townhouse was repainted from mauve. Why blue? \"Because I like it,\" he says. In addition to this burst of blue, there is a thread of red that runs throughout the residence\u2014a rug border here, a lantern there, remarkable Gothic chairs on the stairway.\n\nJayne believes his use of color is one reason clients come calling. In his own studio he uses large blocks of color to define the space, echoing 18th- and 19th-century traditions with an eye to the midcentury masters' use of plane. The result is an ideal backdrop for both antiques and art.\n\nJayne also provides structure through arrangement. For the Philadelphia project, he explains, \"I placed things.\"\n\nThe mirror in the living room, for example, is an important piece. But Jayne was careful to make sure it did not dominate the space. The client already had the mirror and the Regency chairs. The rest of the furniture needed to be acquired. \"He had a lot of trust. Those end tables are a little quirky,\" Jayne says of a pair with bases that feature four birds whose long, curved necks support the tabletop. Still, as unique as they are, they don't shout.\n\nThey don't shout any more than the Bertoia table in the atrium that sits across from a suite of wicker. They don't shout any more than the white Tulip table residing with traditional toile. They don't shout any more than the paisley throw, Maurice Sendak drawing, and Adelphi wallpaper in the master bedroom that Jayne holds particularly dear.\n\nAnd how about the existing trompe l'oeil tented bathroom he kept? \"We touched up the paint where necessary and worked on the light a little. We decorated it. And it worked,\" he says. \"A lot of clients would have torn it out, but sometimes [in the decoration] things grow differently.\"\n\n\"It's easier when you start with a lot of parts\u2014much easier than when you have nothing to build on,\" he adds. \"It leads to more intensity in the decoration.\"\n\nI finally ask him what drives his design choices? Is it instinct or training? \"Talent is a springboard to training,\" he says. \"And no amount of training will produce talent. I tend not to look for the big statement; I offer esoteric things. I am creating a narrative\u2014the client's narrative, not mine.\"\n\nClick here to see Thomas Jayne's renovation of a stunning 19th-century Philadelphia townhouse."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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