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"Rethinking Minimalism\nOutside Philadelphia a Refurbished House Considers Form, Surface and Shadow\nWhen fashion designer Lauren Sara purchased a Colonial Revival house near Philadelphia, she had the vines that covered the exterior cleared and gutted the interior. \"My goal was a loftlike space.\"\nA collector of American folk art, she set a circa 1769 Pennsylvania schrank in the living room, where a 19th- century church pew serves as a table.\nWorking with architects Jeanne Scandura and Tony Crane, Sara had the existing back-to-back fireplaces reshaped and resurfaced and put in ebonized-bamboo floors. A circa 1810 architectural element from New Zealand is mounted above the library fireplace. The dining room is at left.\nThroughout, Sara wanted a uniform palette of black and white. Now in its third home, the built-in sofa in the library was the first piece she ever designed. \"And I still love it,\" she says. The Rhode Island Windsor chair is circa 1770.\n\"I'm interested not so much in interior design as in designing environments,\" says Sara, who graduated from the Parsons School of Design.\n\nShe chose honed concrete for the kitchen counters and added a stainless-steel-topped island. The chairs are from Lancaster County.\nSpearfishing decoys from 1900 to 1940 are arrayed at the door to one of the bedrooms, where the circa 1755 large comb-back Windsor chair sits at a desk with an inlaid-leather blotter. Complementing the collection of fire toys are four parade fire hoses mounted at center.\nFloating shelves that Sara designed hold shoes and leather boxes in the dressing area. Past the stair to her third-floor office stands a wire dress form. A former prot\u00E9g\u00E9 of Calvin Klein's, she is the author of Expecting Style, considered the definitive pregnancy style guide.\nA circa 1910 Amish quilt hangs in the master bedroom, where the refurbished fireplace, with a new hearth of polished concrete, displays a ring with numbered laundry pins from 1915 to 1925. In the sitting area beyond is a very rare circa 1800 double-writing-arm Windsor chair.\nFolding tin birds line a guest room window that, as elsewhere, Sara left unadorned. The circa 1806 portrait by John Brewster, Jr., is set above a Saarinen womb chair. At the foot of the bed, which she covered in a quilted linen, is a rare circa 1875 footed basket from New York State.\nA 15-foot-long harvest table is on the rear patio. Beyond is the horse barn.\n\"I like minimal planting,\" says landscape designer Edwina von Gal. \"It puts the emphasis on the individual plants. If you look back in history, manor houses didn't have foundation plants.\"\nLauren Sara with one of her three horses."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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