"You never want a house to look like Garanimals. There's really nothing worse than matchy-matchy," says interior designer Alessandra Branca, referring to the children's clothing lines in which no two pieces clash. As luck would have it, her clients, who reside in a 19th-century townhouse in one of Chicago's prime neighborhoods, felt exactly the same way. So it might seem surprising that the pair would fall for a home that had been stripped of all of its character by the previous owners, who clad every room in the same material-Sheetrock. But in the backs of their minds, they had a secret weapon in Branca, who is known for her reverence for a home's history.
Restoring the bones of this handsome brick four-story is just the kind of project Branca thrives on; in her mind, the soul of a house is rooted in its architecture. "I felt that the shell should be returned to what it was," she says. "The best interiors play well with a house's age."
To that end, she presided over some subtracting and a whole lot of adding. Up came the standard-issue maple floors, and down went French maple in a chevron pattern, wire-brushed and coated in beeswax to look like it had long been there. Ceilings were coved, fireplaces mounted, a winding banister erected, and moldings added to define the comfortable proportions of the rooms. Branca went so far as to clad the living room walls in parchment pieces cut to look like blocks of marble. Once the framework was in place, she began to do what she does best: She brought texture, color, form, and scale together to create captivating rooms notable for their insouciant mix of periods and styles. "You don't need decoration, you need an exquisite collection of furniture, fabrics, art, lighting, and personal effects," she says.
Indeed, the chandeliers throughout the house illuminate Branca's point. There's the midcentury Italian lighting in the modern, Shaker-inspired kitchen, a rare 1950s opaline glass-and-brass fixture hanging over a low-slung 1970s lacquered coffee table in the family room, and in the dining room, a contemporary plaster-of-Paris chandelier hovering over a 1970s table surrounded by Gustavian chairs. "Lighting can act like sculpture in a room. It can transform a space," she says.
Branca's gift for transformation goes beyond the architecture; her love for playing with textures and finishes shows up throughout the house. To modernize those Gustavian chairs, she covered them in white leather. A pair of early Empire floor lamps in the living room got a sleek, chic treatment with a sleeve of glass and hot-pink silk shades from Thailand. In the family room, she had the 19th-century steel cabinets stripped and replaced the panels with chicken wire to turn them into bookcases. A trio of artworks were made from original Fornasetti printing plates. "I was very lucky," says Branca. "My clients allowed me to play-with art, architecture, materials, surfaces, geometry, color-and it let me bring life to every room."
To see the rest of this house, check out the gallery, here. This article originally appeared in the September/October 2015 print issue of Veranda.
