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"Carol Schuster&amp;#039;s dream house &amp;quot;started with a Kittinger cocktail table and a Danish-modern love seat,&amp;quot; says designer John Krenek of the day the advertising executive crossed the threshold of his shop in High Falls, New York. Schuster, a senior partner at the Ogilvy agency, had closed on a 19th-century farmhouse that same day, and with its sunny rooms looming large in her mind, she wandered into Spruce Design + Decor. And, as Krenek says, she had &amp;quot;no intention of hiring a decorator.&amp;quot; But the next thing she knew, as Schuster explains, &amp;quot;John and I sat for three hours talking about the house and my vision for it, which was to bring forth my past.&amp;quot; The cocktail table, designed in the 1940s by Theodor Muller and Isabel Barringer, had an Asian-modern vibe that unleashed a torrent of memories of the globe-trotting Schuster&amp;#039;s time in China. And the love seat was upholstered in a fabric that was the exact shade of blue that adorned the Polish pottery she had collected during her years in Warsaw.   In his book The Architecture of Happiness, the philosopher Alain de Botton describes a house as &amp;quot;a guardian of identity.&amp;quot; And this is exactly what Schuster wanted her weekend retreat to be\u2014a reflection of herself. (Her primary residence is a Tribeca loft.) After that long discussion with Krenek, she realized that he understood this desire. &amp;quot;She went to the hardware store and had a set of keys made,&amp;quot; the designer recalls, &amp;quot;and by that afternoon I had my security code for the alarm system.&amp;quot; Schuster&amp;#039;s new place was built around 1850 as the white-clapboard centerpiece of a large farm. In 1985, later owners hauled it away from the main road to a bluff overlooking a placid pond and rolling hills. They also hired local stonemasons to build a new foundation using bluestone quarried on the 53-acre property, replaced the clapboard with cedar siding, and added a living room and a dining room. When Schuster came along, it was virtually in turnkey condition. All it needed was her stamp. &amp;quot;I wanted to give the house a very simple, clean palette so it would become a background for Carol&amp;#039;s art and for nature,&amp;quot; explains the designer. Schuster, who serves on the board of Meredith Monk&amp;#039;s House Foundation and is a committee member at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, is a passionate collector of works by Sol LeWitt, Jenny Holzer, Raymond Pettibon, and others. So she and Krenek clarified the interiors with white paint and got down to work. &amp;quot;I dragged out everything I had in boxes from all the places I&amp;#039;ve lived and traveled and all my family mementos,&amp;quot; Schuster says. That included the hand-painted pottery from Poland, a great-uncle&amp;#039;s carefully annotated volumes of Goethe, an aunt&amp;#039;s silver serving pieces and Champagne glasses from Woolworth&amp;#039;s, and the typewriter on which Schuster&amp;#039;s mother learned to type. As these cherished possessions began to find their places in the rooms, Krenek set about filling the three-bedroom house with global and midcentury-modern furnishings, most of them sourced through Spruce and other local shops. Taking his color scheme and inspiration from the stone-and-wood structure, the decorator indulged his penchant for layers of character, from linen upholstery to a patchwork cowhide rug.    Though the farmhouse is all-American at first glance, when it comes to the interiors, &amp;quot;You can&amp;#039;t really place it,&amp;quot; Schuster notes. &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s a worldly spirit to it, and that&amp;#039;s important to me. It has so many textures and flavors of so many nationalities. Every continent seems to be represented in some way, yet you&amp;#039;re in the middle of New York.&amp;quot; Krenek obviously had a lot to do with that. &amp;quot;Taking a traditional farmhouse and bringing in things that wouldn&amp;#039;t be expected\u2014it&amp;#039;s that combination that gives a sense of modernity,&amp;quot; he says. In the living room, Venetian-glass lamps illuminate an 18th-century Chinese credenza. Around the dining table, Windsor-style side chairs alternate with slightly startling brethren, from 1960s bentwood to Victorian horn. In the master bedroom are a Stickley desk, a Josef Hoffmann chair, and an elaborately stitched leather rug. Krenek also brought in objects that embody Schuster&amp;#039;s heritage, such as German pottery whose raw material came from a region of clay mines where one of her uncles worked. As for the walls, Schuster initially hung paintings by the Polish artists she&amp;#039;d collected during her Warsaw sojourn. But, she says, &amp;quot;For me, the house created a new context in which to look at contemporary art.&amp;quot; Which explains the presence of recent purchases\u2014landscape photographs by Hai Bo and Mary Ellen Carroll, whimsical paintings by Franco Mondini-Ruiz\u2014that reflect her experience of nature here and a lighter side of her personality. Best of all, Schuster can walk through the rooms and see her life in every nook and cranny. &amp;quot;The house,&amp;quot; she concludes, &amp;quot;has become a kind of diary.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elledecor.com/design-decorate/interior-designers/tips/a3790/memory-bank-a-45075/>