Inside John Derian's Home

As a (not-so) closeted voyeur, I'm always creepily peering into people's homes when I get the chance. I am shameless. I look into places with windows at eye level, my own neighbors' apartments, when they open their doors as I walk by, and I love actually being invited into the homes of friends, family and clients. How someone lives is a reflection of some part of their personality and I find it all fascinating. I should be arrested. Kind of. Sometimes a person's home is exactly how I imagine it will be, based on what I know about them. Other times, I am floored by wrong my imagination was. In New York, it's particularly crazy to see how people live because there are so many outrageously rich people who live like complete and utter slobs! And, often, you'd never know it by looking at how they put themselves together. I can't tell you how many apartments or brownstones I've walked into, with very successful owners, expecting luxury for days, only to be met with dirty litter boxes, chipped paint, stained carpets, ripped furniture, faulty blinds – squalor, I tell you! 

So, I love when magazines and newspapers (and blogs!) take us inside beautiful homes, showing gorgeously styled rooms on full-page spreads. And the backstories bring the photos to life. I recently posted about John Derian's collaboration with Target, so I was excited to find Shelterpop's story on his 18th century Provincetown, MA country home, with lovely photos taken by Julia Cumes. See for yourself!

Check out the unexpected use of a wood table in the bathroom at left, and the portrait where a mirror normally goes on the right. Clever! 

Derian kept much of the home's 1930s and 1940s wallpaper, despite their varying states of disrepair. It's a fun effect, making it appear that the owner has uncovered a treasure buried under layers of history (and previous owners' design decisions). 

Derian's home is a calm, paired-down and fairly clutter-free reflection of his shop, which is stuffed to the gills with all kinds of curiosities. It actually has the essence of a house museum: an old home preserved and restored, filled with original period furniture and accessories that serves to show us what life was like in ye olden times (the furniture is always very small!). Derian has managed to keep his home's aesthetics grounded in the 18th century, while subtly (but painstakingly) adapting it to meet current standards and comforts of plumbing and electricity. You would never know how much work he's done – not an easy feat!


For comparison, some images of Derian's shop, courtesy of Apartment Therapy: