At his mountain retreat, designer John Oetgen forgoes antlers, logs, and taxidermy for things more personal: family heirlooms, contemporary art… and a touch of whimsy.
Perched at 4,100 feet, on the outskirts of Highlands, North Carolina, the weekend home of interior designer John Oetgen has a casual grandeur that belies its humble exterior. "I didn't need architectural glamour," Oetgen says of the contemporary board-and-batten house, which relates to its location without ostentation, sporting a peaked metal roofline resembling a mountain range. "I wanted something that matches the lifestyle here: people in khaki shorts and boots piling in from a hike for a big meal, and dogs running around everywhere."
Handsomely appointed with antiques, family heirlooms, and a playful mix of artwork, the stylishly cozy mountain aerie is an antidote to city living for the Atlanta designer. "I was raised in Georgian houses and live on the 24th floor of a modern limestone tower that looks like a Tom Ford Gucci store," Oetgen explains. "That's why we built a simple house in the woods-a guys' cabin."
Oetgen served as his own architect, working with artisan-builder Keith Ashe to devise the 4,000-square-foot getaway for himself, his partner, graphic designer John Lineweaver, and their bearded collie, Double. Complete with a soaring two-story screened porch, the house was designed as three connected modules, each with its own steeply vaulted 20-foot-high ceiling and window walls composed of double-height French doors. "After we bought the property, we were in Venice and saw these magnificent palazzo ballrooms with three tall windows overlooking the Grand Canal," Oetgen says. "This is our version."
As owner and decorator, Oetgen eschewed the expected, pairing a Louis XVI-style dining table with Argentine gaucho chairs and substituting three Oriental runners for the traditional living room rug. He enlivened the dark masculinity of the French oak-clad rooms with vibrant colors: Forest-green velvet covers a pair of vintage Jean-Michel Frank chairs, and for the bedroom, a wrought-iron chandelier was painted cobalt blue. "I've always been an Yves Klein freak," admits the designer, who is also an accomplished painter and photographer.
Oetgen, who calls his hideaway Mary Jack in honor of his parents, furnished it with sentimental inheritances that give the house, constructed just seven years ago, a deep personal history. "The wicker furniture on the porch comes from several Oetgen family homes, and the wing chair in the living room was the one I sat in as a boy," he says wistfully. "The house is a bit of a time capsule, but it still feels very now."
Indeed, Oetgen's mix of refined classics and rustic accents brings a modern sensibility to the forest retreat. "We didn't want obligatory mountain decor like antlers or a chandelier made out of horns," says Oetgen, who instead integrated woodland touches with a sly wit. A massive sepia Hugh Hales-Tooke photograph of a sheep, a ceramic frog stool, papier-mâché trophy heads, and a blue flocked rabbit figurine share space with other conversation pieces, from a steel-and-bronze Bertoia and a phrenology bust on an antique Atlanta bank console to a carved plaster grotto mirror that once hung in a French opera house.
"We call this house our cabin of curiosities," Oetgen says. "Everything has a story, and people walk around looking at things with a smile on their face, which puts a smile on ours."
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