Inside John Derian's magical Cape Cod house
It was a rainy day in Provincetown, Massachusetts, when the designer John Derian first saw what would eventually become his house, an 18th-century Greek Revival number in the centre of town. “I wasn't looking,” he says. “I hadn't been here in five years. I was staying in Nantucket and just came over for one night to visit a friend. But I thought, ‘Wow, what a great house.’ When I called, though, it was under offer. I took a video of the house anyway, and when I got back to New York, every time I would put my phone down, the video would somehow appear on the screen, like it wanted to keep showing me the house.”
John had been visiting Provincetown, a beautiful seaside town at the very tip of Cape Cod, on and off since his childhood in Boston, when the huge expanses of sandy dunes and woodland outside the town created endless opportunities for exploration. He began to return regularly in his twenties, drawn to the variety of what it had to offer. “There's so much nature here, but it also has this tacky, crazy side,” he explains. The town has a long and fascinating history: it was the first landing place of the Mayflower, the famous ship which brought the Pilgrims to America in 1620, and in the 19th century was a thriving fishing village and home to a large community of Portuguese immigrants. As the fishing industry declined in the early 20th century, Provincetown's natural beauty began drawing an artistic crowd of painters, playwrights and poets, and from the middle of the century, its reputation as a bohemian community helped it to take on a new life as a destination for gay and lesbian travellers, which has continued to this day.
Provincetown certainly seemed destined to draw John back and keep him there. The house which kept appearing mysteriously on his phone ("I'm rather low-tech," he admits), was still for sale when he reconsidered the idea of buying a house a few months later at the end of 2006. His realtor dragged him around three other houses in Provincetown, none of which took his fancy, before they came back to this one. “I took one walk around and turned to him and said out loud, 'I love this house. I want you to hear me say it because I feel like I’ve said nothing positive all morning.'"
“I just loved the setup, that it was still intact, that it had all this original detail,” remembers John. “It was definitely a little ‘Grey Gardens’, there were mattresses stacked to the ceiling upstairs and that kind of thing. But I wasn't quite sure what I was going to do with the renovation.” That problem was swiftly solved for him when he invited friends for his first Easter there. “They all said, 'We love that you're keeping these yellow walls and purple floors.' And I was like, 'Am I?'…I guess I am.' I did discuss stripping it back with my contractor, but it was clear that I would lose a lot of the details. And then I thought, well if I'm buying antiques, and I see, say, a cabinet with its paint all crackly, I wouldn't necessarily strip it and paint it, I would probably keep it. So I thought, why can't I just leave my house like that?”
In reality, plenty of ‘invisible’ work to be done, including shoring up the foundations, rewiring, replumbing, fixing the chimney, and restoring the five fireplaces. Built in 1789 for a sea captain who could keep on eye on happenings at sea from the front windows, the house was then extended backwards in the 19th century, and at the very back was a space for the ‘horseless carriage’, which has now been transformed into a small shop for John's dreamy homewares. As a result of this evolutionary process, there are plenty of attractive quirks to the architecture and decoration, from the faded 20th-century wallpapers to the seashell and horsehair plasterwork.
Between the dining room and one of the sitting rooms, here are twin doors immediately next to each other. “I think the part of the sitting room which has the second door had once been closed off,” explains John. “It might have been a birthing room. They used to have rooms in these houses that were specially for births… and deaths. It would be a room to view a dead body or to have a baby." The house also has an interesting circular structure – you can walk around most of the downstairs through its many doors in a circle, and you can also go up to the first floor via the original front staircase and come down the later back stairs into the kitchen, or even down the outdoor stairs even further back that lead from John's studio to the back garden.
Against this backdrop, John has filled the house with a collection of the unique and extraordinary objects that fans of his work will know well. There are found organic pieces such as shells, sponges and rocks that congregate in cabinets and on mantelpieces, folk art and antiques, towering arrangements of dried flowers, botanical and scientific illustrations from old books, and everywhere you look, objects with an extraordinary patina. The antique butcher block that forms the centrepiece of the kitchen is an excellent example, almost unbelievably worn and scratched, but with a rather grand presence all the same. Even the new things have a sense of history to them, like the simple chairs and long chaise in the sitting room with their stripped back linen upholstery, which were designed by John for his line with Cisco Brothers.
Despite the abundance of unusual things, the house has a spare, elegant feel to it, and a surprisingly relaxed atmosphere. John and his partner, the photographer Stephen Kent Johnson, are regularly up and down from their New York apartment, hosting friends and family. The house, without a doubt, is a character, an entity in its own right. “I remember the first year when I was renovating, I was here in the middle of the winter with all the floors ripped up., It never exactly felt like there were like ghosts or spirits here, but there was an energy and intensity in the house. And I remember just yelling out loud, 'It's going to be better!' And since then I feel like the house settled and it's all been good. But I still talk to it. I say thank you when I leave.”
The new edition of The John Derian Picture Book is out this October. Preorder it now in the US and in the UK. johnderian.com
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Stephen Kent Johnson1/16The seating in this room is from John's line with Cisco Brothers.
Stephen Kent Johnson2/16A lot of the timber behind the wallpaper was reused ship timber. The wallpaper on this chimney was buckling, but when it was removed, John liked the effect of the bare timber so much that he left it as it was.
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Stephen Kent Johnson4/16The board in the hallway was part of a trial process by the artist Peter Gee.
Stephen Kent Johnson5/16The second of the two front sitting rooms has a faded yellow floral wallpaper.The floors in several rooms are splatter-painted in a style typical of Cape Cod cottages.
Stephen Kent Johnson6/16This room is often used for games and gatherings when guests are in the house.
Stephen Kent Johnson7/16At the top of the front stairs is a faded scenic wallpaper, possibly from the 1930s.
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Stephen Kent Johnson10/16The bed cover in this room is by Jeanette Farrier, who stitches them together from vintage kantha quilts. This example is from her collection with John Derian.
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Stephen Kent Johnson13/16This nook on the landing has an 18th-century sofa that became part of John's collection for Cisco Brothers.
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Stephen Kent Johnson15/16The passage at the side of the house leads to the outdoor dining area.
Stephen Kent Johnson16/16The back of the house, which functions both as John's shop and a garage in the winter for John and Stephen's car, Scotty.
