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"View Slideshow\n\nThere is a story that Juan Montoya likes to tell about his initial visit to the Pound Ridge, New York, country house of Kay and Clyde Davis, a real estate agent and an advertising agency founder. As he approached the handsomely wooded property by car and studied the structure from the outside, he quite naturally began to form an idea about its scale and personality. Inside, he was given a tour of the combined living/dining area, the kitchen, several bedrooms. Then he was offered a refreshment and invited to sit down and discuss some of the design challenges at hand (and there were quite a few).\n\n&amp;quot;But where,&amp;quot; he asked, &amp;quot;is the rest of the house?&amp;quot;\n\nThe couple looked at each other, surprised. They had forgotten to show the designer easily half the place.\n\nMontoya is fond of this anecdote because he feels that it underlines several key principles of enlightened design. A house should announce itself logically to every visitor. It should speak in a clear aesthetic language. If it grew in size over time, as this house had, then there must be a strong unifying sensibility at work integrating old and new and rendering the transitions between them as seamless as possible.\n\nNow, suddenly, the shell of the room spoke to the Subes and Porteneuve table and the elegant Ruhlmann chairs.\n\nThe house Montoya first saw that day had been built by the present owners back in 1975 and expanded by them in 1990. In 2001 they asked architect J. Woodson Rainey, Jr., to collaborate with Montoya on finding ways to smooth some of the rougher interstices. Chief among these was the lack of a proper entrance and center of distribution. &amp;quot;A house that rambles and has two sets of public rooms, even two kitchens, as this one does, desperately needs an entrance,&amp;quot; explains Montoya. &amp;quot;This is partly about flow, partly about announcing the intentions of the house.&amp;quot;\n\nIn the area of intentions, Montoya was faced with another interesting challenge. The house Rainey remade for the Davises was ranchlike in its low profile and spreading floor plan, Modernist in its use of glass and its openness to its lush setting and Arts and Crafts-like in its use of warm, earthy materials. It was clearly architecture in tune with place, confident and well proportioned. There were several very skilled transitions, as between indoors and outdoors with a wood ceiling whose flat plane continued out beyond the transom windows, or within the interiors, where a chunky stone fireplace wall stopped short of the ceiling but effectively separated the living area from the dining area.\n\nBut what was this house to be, exactly? As conceived, and even reconceived by the architect, it had integrity and increased logic; it was a welcoming house for the clients alone or in the company of their children and grandchildren; but there was another factor. The clients were passionate collectors of serious Art D\u00E9co furniture, sculpture, paintings, ceramics, silver and objets. They had an extensive collection and were actively expanding in an area of the decorative arts whose distinctive silhouettes, materials and motifs don&amp;#39;t often easily or comfortably meld with other vocabularies\u2014least among them, one would have thought, an earthy ranch, no matter how tightened or rethought.\n\n&amp;quot;We were at a total loss,&amp;quot; Kay Davis recalls. &amp;quot;We were wedded to the house, but we didn&amp;#39;t know how to combine the architecture and the collection. We were setting pieces everywhere and anywhere.&amp;quot;\n\nThis was the major area where Montoya deployed his integrating skills. He was determined to make sure that the place did not look as though &amp;quot;the house were calling for one thing and the furniture for another.&amp;quot; He began, suitably enough, in the entrance hall, which he calls a gallery. The word is not mere flourish. Montoya saw this newly defined space as central to showcasing the clients&amp;#39; many smaller Art D\u00E9co pieces, for which he designed a large sleek cabinet, the first of many custom pieces he devised for the project to bridge the house and its contents.\n\nMontoya&amp;#39;s insertions continue in the dining area, where he fabricated both a credenza and an armoire out of macassar ebony, a wood often used in D\u00E9co furniture. Now, suddenly, the shell of the room spoke to the Raymond Subes and Alfred Porteneuve ebony dining table and the suite of elegant Ruhlmann chairs. On the other side of the space he installed a long counter, also of macassar, to help draw the dining area, visually and practically, into the kitchen.\n\nHe made similar contributions to the master bedroom (cabinets in goatskin, another favored D\u00E9co material) and the husband&amp;#39;s study, where he modeled bookshelves for an extensive library on a striking Ruhlmann bookcase. &amp;quot;Juan did not mimic Art D\u00E9co,&amp;quot; says Kay Davis. &amp;quot;But he did reflect it.&amp;quot;\n\nMontoya&amp;#39;s work did not end with cabinetry. There was also the confidence with which he organized all the D\u00E9co material. &amp;quot;I tried to isolate the pieces,&amp;quot; explains the designer, who lifted furniture away from the wall or devised symmetrical arrangements that functioned for living and entertaining while striving for an almost sculptural quality. Pieces like a Printz sideboard, a Ruhlmann cabinet and a Wretling mechanical table that were formerly &amp;quot;everywhere and anywhere&amp;quot; now stand in Rainey&amp;#39;s crisp box with purpose.\n\nNone of this is to suggest that the Davises live in a museum. &amp;quot;We are no longer the owners of two homes and an unrelated collection of furniture and art,&amp;quot; says Clyde Davis. &amp;quot;Thanks to Woody and Juan, what we have now is a single, elegant, welcoming gem.&amp;quot;"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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