Beach/House Spring 2025

SPRING 2025

A Cottage Garden

in the Dunes Page 3

When Bathtime

Beckons You

Outdoors Page 19

2 | Provincetown Independent | BEACH / HOUSE | Spring 2025

SOL

CARPENTRY

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solcarpentry.com

Box 618, Truro, MA 02666

508-221-7794

r. todd schwebel

rtschwebel@gmail.com

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Real Estate Specialist

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650 Cable Road, Eastham, MA 02642

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It’s invariably cold and gray when those of us on Outer Cape Cod

start our spring to-do lists. We go outside anyway: We know that if

we look closely, we’ll see buds swelling on the beach plums, and that’s

enough to put a sunnier future in view. The light begins to change in

an artist’s studio. There’s a chartreuse glow in the garden. It’s time

to bring your dining table to the porch, top up your outdoor bathtub,

and welcome spring.

Editor: Teresa Parker

Contributors: Jennifer Condon, Hannah Oakland, Stephen Orr,

Dorothea Samaha, Eve Samaha, Agata Storer

Design: Susan Abbott

Sales team: Emma Doyle, Cooper Joseph, Martine Taylor

ON THE COVER: David Kirchner and

Scott Warner are gardeners of a rare and

persistent kind. They’ve coaxed a jewel box

of delicate spring ephemerals into being

on the windy bluff above the bay in Truro.

(Photo by Stephen Orr; cover design by

Chris Kelly)

Each office is independently owned and operated.

Provincetown Independent | BEACH / HOUSE | Spring 2025 | 3

A Cottage Garden in the Dunes

Spring blossoms brave a windy perch above the bay

By Stephen Orr

Hidden behind a rustic wooden

fence tiny spring treasures

abound: Nodding bluebells,

arching ferns, dainty forget- menots,

and self- sown alexanders in

a glowing shade of chartreuse, all

knitted together like a tapestry. This

exposed seaside location above Cold

Storage Beach in Truro is hardly the

spot where you’d expect to find a jewel

box of delicate spring ephemerals

tucked underneath the rough cedars,

but here they are.

Anyone who has walked Outer

Cape Cod’s bay beaches knows that

they can be serene and balmy one day

and swept by sandblasting winds the

next. Most gardeners in such a location

stick to the tried and true: rugosa

roses, grasses, beach plums, pitch

pines, and oaks. But David Kirchner

and his husband, Scott Warner, are

not like most. Over several decades,

they have been perfecting a sloping

garden that yields to the reality of this

windy spot while pushing the envelope

of what can be grown in a mercurial

marine environment.

When Kirchner bought a house

here over 30 years ago, the existing

garden included roses and hydrangeas

surrounded by the usual Outer

Cape tangle of bush honeysuckle, bittersweet,

and black locust. Though he

had never gardened before, he jumped

right in by carving a series of flower

beds out of the rough lawn and filling

them with garden soil and compost.

He was on a mission to find out

the range of plants that would grow

on what is basically a dune, nearly 50

feet above the waves.

Ten years later, when he and

Warner bought the house next door,

the pair took down the fences, added

more beds, and knitted the two lots

together with plantings. The

resulting three- quarteracre

cottage garden now

surrounds two 19thcentury

cottages,

which Kirchner

conjectures were

used for worker

housing by those

working the fishing

weirs below.

Rambling roses

such as ‘Paul’s

Himalayan Musk’

and ‘Rambling Rector’

claw their way up

30 feet into the trees while

The entry garden features gravel paths and prostrate junipers punctuated with a red chokeberry in white spring bloom. A chartreuse palette of

golden hops, ‘Golden Spirit’ smokebush, and groundcovers of Euphorbia corallioides and Smyrnium perfoliatum weaves throughout the property.

(Photos by Stephen Orr)

a well- timed display of bulbs, perennials,

and self- sown annuals launch

a floral parade that lasts from early

spring to late autumn. A woodland

garden, created after a

septic system upgrade

in 2013, sits partway

down the hill

along the bed

of the former

railroad that

ran along the

embankment

all the way to

Provincetown.

The tough,

spring-blooming

Father Hugo rose.

The garden has been a place of

experimentation ever since, with a

list of successes that takes less time

to name than the failures.

The Ways of the Wind

The main challenge is also the most

obvious. “We have wind here most of

the time,” says Kirchner. “It can be

very problematic. We’re so exposed,

and it can come from any direction.”

The price of the expansive views off to

Provincetown is the prevailing winds

that travel over the water. “The houses

create wind blocks,” says Kirchner.

“That’s why the garden is on the

road side of the property and not on

the bay side.” But the wind can never

be tamed entirely. Nor’easters define

the winters, while strong winds blow

from the southwest in the summers.

The other challenge is the soil,

which is almost pure sand. Warner

and Kirchner can easily list from

memory the plants that like the sharp

drainage and decide to stay and the

ones that prefer richer soil and pull a

disappearing act after their first year.

Because of the lack of organic matter,

compost and soil can easily wash

down through the grit; it needs to be

replenished every few years. “You can

tell when the soil is giving out,” says

Warner. “The plants let you know.”

Watering is done by hand rather

than with an automated system — it’s

more precise that way. But by August,

there can be casualties. Even though

continued on page 4

A simple path fringed by honesty, ostrich ferns, and alexanders (Smyrmium perfoliatum) curves

through the woodland garden on the lower level.

Camassia, one of the only native North American bulbs available in the trade, and ostrich ferns

illuminate a shady corner.


A Cottage Garden in the Dunes

continued from page 3

this spot is by most measures idyllic

for humans, horticulturally speaking

it is a survival-of-the-fittest situation,

with every plant having to pull

its own weight.

Plants That Earn

Their Places

Roses make the cut, but not every variety

succeeds. They have to be tough

enough to withstand the wind while

tolerating often dry conditions. Ramblers

such as ‘Appleblossom’ and

‘Baltimore Belle’ bloom prolifically

over arches and through trees. Warner

favors single- petaled varieties

like the species Father Hugo (Rosa

hugonis) so that pollinators can easily

access their nectar and pollen.

The gardeners don’t always agree

about which plants earn a spot in the

garden and which do not. “I regret

ever planting Thérèse Bugnet,” says

Warner of the well- known rugosa.

“It’s completely taking over the bed

and the lawn with its suckers.”

“Oh, but its red stems are so

pretty in winter,” Kirchner counters.

To which Warner replies, “The

flowers ball and never open.” Kirchner

adds one last note: “Well, it

smells really nice.” Like any good

relationship, gardening is all about

compromise.

Plants that self- sow somewhat

aggressively but not invasively are

welcomed since they provide a baseline

of flowers that return year

after year. Their habit of

turning up where they

want to instead of

where they were first

sown lends the

kind of randomized

charm that

defines cottage gardens. Especially in

spring, when annuals and biennials

such as honesty, patrinia, alexanders,

white corydalis, rose campion,

and coral spurge weave through various

beds.

A troll with the

look of a sea captain

crouches under

the graceful arches of

Solomon’s seal.

A pot of black ‘Queen of the Night’ tulips flanks a garden archway. (Photos by Stephen Orr)


The garden is a celebration of eye- catching groundcovers such

as pink- flowered ‘Champagne’ and ‘Domino’ epimediums,

forget-me-nots, and euphorbia.

Combinations such as this Epimedium × rubrum and

Kenilworth ivy appear effortless, even when they’re planned.

Spanish bluebells can be invasive in some settings. Some

gardeners don’t mind the invasion, however.

Taller self- seeders like foxgloves,

Greek mullein (Verbascum

olympicum), and Verbena bonariensis

form graceful spires, punctuating the

property with waving wands in the

coastal breezes. “To me, foxgloves are

the ultimate cottage garden flower,”

says Kirchner of the tall biennial with

its nodding, bell- shaped blossoms.

Thinking Forward

As with any garden, this one is never

finished. The lower woodland garden,

once sunny before the cedars

and black locust filled in, is now getting

shadier, so the planting will need

some adjusting. “I like the opportunity

to have the woodland plants

down there,” says Warner. “And

since many of the trees are deciduous

it works out that they can get the early

spring sun.

“Our theory now is, these are the

things that like it here so let them

grow,” he says, “rather than struggling

against the inevitable demise

of plants that aren’t happy.” Unsuccessful

experiments include astrantia,

winter hazel, larkspurs, cardoons,

and lilies, the last decimated by the

lily leaf beetle. Broad- leaved evergreens

hate the winter winds. After

a good start, hollyhocks developed

leaf rust and are now out of the picture.

Rabbits mow down their crocuses.

Water- loving plants like cardinal

flower and Japanese iris need more

moisture than the sandy location

can offer. “Hundreds of plants have

croaked,” Warner says. “Sometimes,

things just don’t like you and I’m fine

with that.”

So why try? Maybe a garden in

a spot where many people would be

happy with carefree dune grasses

and an astonishing water view is just

quixotic. These two have answers.

“The husbandry of plants is just inherently

satisfying to me,” says Warner.

“It’s a creative outlet, and it’s

also good to be outside.”

For Kirchner, a garden is about

the future. “Right now, just knowing

I can walk out and see the first spring

flowers,” he says, his eyes scanning

the land. “It keeps you thinking forward

and not backward.”

“Spring never ceases to amaze

me,” says Warner. “That this is actually

happening. These flowers.

This greenery. It’s a miracle that enthralled

me as a child and has never

ceased.”

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In the Mood for Wallpaper

Letting layers, textures, and scale deliver design that feels just right

By Jennifer Condon

Few things make me happier than

adding color to walls. As a decorator,

I know that nothing else

creates the same effect so quickly. But

recently, I’ve had a lot of requests for

wallpaper instead. As the pursuit of

serene minimalism over the past decade

has slowly given way to interest

in more layered, eclectic interiors,

wallpaper has naturally gravitated

into the design mix.

First there were experiments with

bold patterns on powder room walls.

Next, textured grasscloths made a

resurgence. And more recently, clients

have said yes to scenic murals

on bedroom and dining room walls.

Now, nearly every project I work on

incorporates wallpaper somewhere.

Wallpaper’s earliest uses were to

line small areas like cupboards and

trunks, according to the Victoria and

Albert Museum in London, which has

an important collection of wallpaper

designs dating to the mid- 1500s. By

the 20th century, following improvements

in printing technology, it was

showing up everywhere, covering the

walls of nearly every Gilded Age house

across all levels of income.

Today, wallpaper has found a

comfortable middle ground; it’s being

used for a variety of effects in a

range of spaces, and it is available

in countless styles. Technology has

allowed for faster printing and easier

installation, and that has evolved

to include a good number of choices

in the peel- and- stick category (for

which you need little more than a few

household tools, a little patience, and

a commitment to measuring twice).

With wallpaper, though, the

range of possibilities can be overwhelming.

There’s color to consider,

of course, but I don’t start there. I go

first to scale and mood. Color then

becomes a way to winnow favorites. If

you’ve wanted to consider wallpaper

but haven’t been sure where to start,

try exploring these four groupings

to set a direction. They’ll lead you to

choices that are right for your space.

continued on page 8

PRETTY PERENNIALS

Florals were among the earliest wallpaper motifs, as designs were usually

copied from embroidered textiles. Choosing a pattern that is rooted in nature

complements most interiors. I recommend looking to the colors outside

your window, then decide if you want to highlight or contrast that palette to

narrow the field.

ARCHITEXTURAL

Sometimes, rooms need a bit of dimension to add subtle interest. In these

cases, I look for papers that will create depth through a trompe l’oeil effect.

The digital printing capabilities are so good now, it is often impossible to tell

these are not truly textural.

Tile Block: This paper adds dimension with

faux stone tiles that are full of movement. I

would use this in a modern home that needs

another layer in an open living space. It would

also look great in a kitchen or covering a

console table. Tempaper, $60/roll.

Hoffman Sisal: This classic grassclothinspired

paper looks as though it’s made

from natural fibers but actually is wipeable

vinyl. This would upgrade any living room or

hallway where a little oomph is needed but

you don’t want to overwhelm the furnishings.

Tempaper, $50/roll.

Lola Floor: Strong

enough to use on an

entry or sunroom

floor, this is also a great

option for kitchen and

bathroom walls or a

storage cabinet. Chasing

Paper, $6.25/square foot.

Tree of Life: An expressive botanical motif

full of color and joy. Use this in a kitchen,

large bath, or guest bedroom. Sandberg,

$9.25/square foot.

Posey Stripe: With a charming English

cottage vibe, this is perfect for hallways or

bedrooms. Chasing Paper, $125/roll.

Mum’s the Word: A graphic, energetic

interpretation best for small spaces or above

chair rails. Katie Kime, $128/roll.


In the Mood for Wallpaper


NAUTI- CHIC

One of the best ways to revive a

tired space is to have fun with it.

Embodying the relaxed feeling

of summertime, these nauticalinspired

designs set a playful mood

that offer reminders of the pleasures

of living near the ocean.

The World Is Your Oyster: What’s more

iconic here than oysters? Use this cheeky

print in a butler’s pantry, entry, or powder

room. Katie Kime, $128/roll.

Asian Waves: A line- cut inspired

interpretation of the sea, this elegant option

would look great paired with shiplap in

a bathroom or informal dining room.

RoomMates, $42/roll.

People in the Water:

With a hand- drawn

feel, this paper is

pure summer fun.

I would use this in

a space where you

want to welcome

creativity, such as a

guest bedroom or

kid’s area. Chasing

Paper, from $125/roll.

Shirting Patchwork: A modern twist on

classic Americana, with edges softened by

overlapping fabric-like appearance. Ideal

for cozying up a bedroom or small nook.

Wallshoppe, $78/roll.

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GRAND GESTURES

Scale is always the most important

element in a room. Patterns with

large dimensions create a strong

focal point and a sense of cohesion.

Ruby: The essence of a jungle, but with

enough negative space so as not to

overwhelm. This would make a striking dining

room paper or transform a longer hallway.

Rebel Walls, $8/square foot.

Wilhelm: A Swedish design, this large-scale mural makes deft use of negative

space. With tree canopies occupying the top half of the paper, it gently envelops the

room without overwhelming. Works anywhere large enough to showcase its scale.

Sandberg, $8/square foot.

Coral & Kelp: A made- to- order mural that

conjures under the sea in an easygoing

neutral palette. Perfect for an accent wall in

a bedroom or dining room. Tempaper, $15/

square foot.

Zen Garden: Swirling sand was the

inspiration for this large- scale geometric,

which is both dramatic and serene. I would

use this in a larger living room or bedroom to

add softness. Sandberg, $160/roll.

Sabrina Cole Quinn Photography

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Artist Anne Webb Johnson stands next to one of her paintings in the bi-level studio at the rear of her home in North Truro. The sailing maps were installed by the house’s previous owner,

artist Helen Sawyer. (Photo by Agata Storer)

A Lofty Lineage in North Truro

How a space once used for storing sails came to house an artistic legacy

By Stephen Orr

Sometimes you just know when

a place is the one. It was 1978

when Anne Webb Johnson and

her husband, David, found themselves

looking at an unusual house

on Hughes Road in North Truro.

It was the home of two prominent

local artists, Helen Sawyer and Jerry

Farnsworth, who were in their

90s and wanted to sell.

“I walked through the back

door, through the sail loft, and into

the living room. Helen was sitting

on a sofa there,” says Webb Johnson.

“I didn’t even need to see the

rest of it.”

For Webb Johnson, an artist

who was working as an architectural

designer in Boston, the quick

attachment was almost spiritual. “I

think it’s the proportions and the

height of the ceilings of both the

living room and loft that did it,” she

says. “I’m very spatially minded.”

The sail loft is one of a kind. It is

an impressive double-height room

at the back of the 1840 Greek Revival

that had originally belonged

to the Small family. Isaac Small

was the first keeper of the Highland

Light, and his descendants

continued the tradition and ran

the Highland House Hotel, among

other ventures. Webb Johnson was

told that the loft was moved in the

1860s from Pamet Harbor, where

it had been used as a space to store

and repair sails for the local fishing

fleet. In its day a utilitarian space,

the dark wood interior is now filled

with antiques, Persian rugs, and

heirlooms. Stepping into it, you feel

you’ve entered a stately English

manor house.

Sawyer and Farnworth, who

lived in the house for much of the

20th century, repurposed the sail

loft as a painting studio. Sawyer

decorated the balustrades of its

wrapround balcony with a collection

of sailing charts that her

brother used for a global circumnavigation

— which he did in a

small boat during the early part of

the century.

After they bought the house,

the Webb Johnsons began to understand

better the immense influence

Sawyer and Farnsworth had in the

early art scene of the Outer Cape.

The artists met in the 1910s when

they were both students of Charles

Hawthorne, the founder of the Cape

Cod School of Art. They were married

in 1925. After Hawthorne’s

death, they became instructors

themselves, opening their own art

schools in Wellfleet and Provincetown

in the 1930s before founding

the North Truro School of Art

on Pond Village Road, where they

taught hundreds of students from

1940 to 1963.

Like their mentor, Hawthorne,

the couple painted in the more conventional

style of the early art colony.

Both were also jury members at

the Provincetown Art Association

(the institution founded in 1914

would in 1978 add the word “museum”

to become PAAM) where

they attempted to appease both the

traditional realism and modern abstraction

factions that had emerged

in the early part of the century with

the arrival in Provincetown of artists

like Blanche Lazzell, Agnes

Weinrich, Karl Knaths, and Hans

Hofmann. For many decades, the

couple remained a vital part of the

artistic fabric of the Outer Cape

and also in Sarasota, Fla., where

Leonore, an undated oil painting by Jerry Farnsworth, reflects his interest in painting

women. Often, his subjects were people from the local community. A prominent member

of the Outer Cape art colony, he worked in the studio for much of the 20th century. The

curtains, made of Liberty fabric, and a collection of antiques were added by Webb Johnson.

(Photo by Agata Storer)


they ran an art school during the

winters.

The Webb Johnsons took a circuitous

route to North Truro. Both

David and Anne were born in England,

but the couple moved to the

Bahamas in 1967. David was a physician

and Anne designed houses.

“That was quite the place to be

if you were doing what I was doing

in those days,” she says. “It was a

small pond, but lots of fun to work

with the rich and famous there at

the time.” David’s next post at the

Lahey Clinic in Burlington later

moved them to Boston.

At first, the couple were too

busy with their careers in Boston

to use the sail loft for much more

than a storage room. Later, it became

a ping-pong room for the

kids and following that a romantic

ally atmospheric dining room for

entertaining.

After David died in 2007, Anne

continued to come to Truro for

weekends and vacations. But it

wasn’t until she was “finally ready

to not work anymore at the age

of 79” in 2019 that she came to live

throwing an oilcloth over the formal

dining table. She uses it for her

paintbrushes and palettes; easels

lean in the corner, and stacks of

her own paintings sit underneath

portraits by the former owners.

The room holds a sampling of the

collection of art and furniture that

Sawyer and Farnsworth left behind

after they sold the house and moved

to Sarasota. “They never quite

moved out,” she says, and she likes

it that way.

“Decoration-wise, this room is

pretty much as we found it,” Webb

Johnson says, though she and David

added their own family heirlooms

inherited over the years. As with

many cases of historic preservation,

this house, and particularly

the sail loft, illustrates the importance

of realizing what should be

left untouched. In resisting the

urge to modernize, Webb has been

the steward of a historic legacy and

a space that is perhaps even more

magical now than when she first

entered it. Sometimes the less you

do, the better.

Jerry Farnsworth in a 1930 portrait by

Peter A. Juley & Son. (Photo courtesy

Smithsonian American Art Museum)

An archival photograph of a 1938 painting

of Helen Sawyer by her husband, Jerry

Farnsworth. (Photo courtesy National

Academy of Design)

The sail loft, seen in an exterior view, shows the hatch where large sails could be moved in

and out for repair or storage. Webb Johnson has been told it was originally located at Pamet

Harbor and moved here in the 1860s. (Photo by Agata Storer)

Ann, Farnsworth’s 1927 oil painting, hangs above a sideboard. (Photo by Agata Storer)

in North Truro. Since then, she has

enjoyed developing her skills as an

artist.

“I’ve painted ever since I could

hold a brush,” she says. “My father

looked at what I was good at, which

was math and art, and asked around

what I should do. And that’s how I

got into architecture.” She went on

to have a successful career with her

neighbor, preservationist Chuck

Steinman, specializing in designs

for elder housing — her projects

included the original interiors of

Seashore Point in Provincetown.

For the past several years,

Webb Johnson has relished her

involvement with the Outer Cape

Art Collective, a group organized

by Provincetown artist Laura

Shabott during the isolating days

of the pandemic. “I think it got us

through,” she says. It’s a loose affiliation

of artists who meet regularly

to discuss and critique their

work. They’ve shown together at

the Provincetown Commons, and

their latest exhibition opens at

Berta Walker Gallery on April 18.

Webb Johnson continues the

artistic legacy of the sail loft by

Northwest light through the studio windows illuminates the dining table, a family heirloom of Webb Johnson’s from her native England, and

another family antique, a dresser filled with a display of blue and white Staffordshire china. (Photo by Agata Storer)

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The dining table at the Kohlberg house in Wellfleet has a top of Douglas fir and sculpted ash legs. Blue steel brackets are just visible underneath. (Photos by Agata Storer)

One Strong Table

Peter McMahon’s design can be as fancy or plain as its materials make it

By Dorothea Samaha

Peter McMahon is not going to

brag about his tables. They are

what he calls “a Flintstones

solution” to a practical problem. After

McMahon founded the Cape Cod

Modern House Trust in 2007 to restore

and preserve the endangered

modern houses — often derelict

— that were hidden in the woods of

Wellfleet, he realized he’d need to

furnish them. He was no “fine woodworker,”

he says, but he knew his way

around steel and wood. “I wanted to

make a really strong table in the fewest

possible moves.”

McMahon’s tables are sleek, uncomplicated,

and deceptively light.

Their form follows function. These

are Y tables: he borrowed the design

for the legs from the French architect

Jean Prouvé: a Y- shape, perfectly

splayed so that they’re not in anybody’s

way. “It can’t be improved

upon,” says McMahon. He tried a

competing design: “The X tables

didn’t really work.”

Steel brackets of his own design

attach the legs to a center beam and

to the tabletop. The result is a piece

of furniture so strong that, McMahon

says, “You could have two people

jumping up and down on it, and it

wouldn’t break.”

His ideas about building things

are, he says, probably thanks to

Froebel blocks — those simple cubes,

cones, arches, and cylinders invented

in the mid- 1800s by the German

educator Friedrich Froebel, who also

invented kindergarten. Children of

the 1970s in small- town Massachusetts

played with them, or versions

of them, too. His mother bought the

ones made by Creative Playthings.

“All these famous architects had

them,” says McMahon. “Frank Lloyd

Wright, Walter Gropius.”

McMahon’s block-building years

were spent in an old house in Reading

decorated with his mother’s collection

of farmhouse furniture. She

was an art historian but was also interested

in Scandinavian design, and

she brought home pieces from a trip

Peter McMahon sits on a chair that he made, inside the Kohlberg house that he restored from

the ruin of neglect. Behind him, on the deck, there’s another table of the same design but made

with unsculpted legs and a simple plank top.

to Denmark. McMahon, thoroughly

inspired by the shapes around him,

went to Boston Architectural College

in the 1980s.

His design philosophy isn’t just

modernist — it’s utilitarian. “Beauty

isn’t something added, like a decoration.

Beauty comes from structure,”

he says. “This gets me to Vitruvius.”

Vitruvius was a Roman architect and

engineer who lived in the first century

B.C.E. and is known for his multivolume

work titled De Architectura.

His three requirements of good design,

says McMahon, were commodity,

firmness, and delight.

What Vitruvius really meant, says

McMahon, is “utility, strength, and

beauty.” A well- designed thing has

to suit its purpose. “The modernists

would say that if it’s useful and

sound, then it’s probably beautiful.”

The Y table’s design is always the

same. But depending on what purpose

the table must serve, McMahon

employs different materials in

the construction. The tabletop might

be made of solid wood, plywood,

or rough boards. The leg materials

vary as well. The “basic cheapo leg”

is made of a piece of framing lumber,

not sculpted. McMahon handles

the loose legs as if they were Froebel

blocks. “You’d use this on a temporary

table,” he says of the “cheapo”

leg. “A quick and dirty table.”

Legs that are a step up are made

of knotty pine or Douglas fir — also

framing lumber, but this time sculpted,

with rounded edges. Even nicer are

those made of clear Douglas fir, free

of knots. The fanciest legs are made

of ash, the same wood that baseball

bats are made of and rounded on both

sides, says McMahon. “Like someone’s

calf.”

McMahon uses regular steel fasteners

for indoor tables and stainless

steel for outdoor ones. At first, he

used the same enamel- painted steel

brackets, made by the steel fabricator

New England Welding, for both

continued on page 16


One Strong Table


indoor and outdoor versions. But the

steel in the outdoor tables rusted

when exposed to the salt air. So, Mc-

Mahon went back to the fabricator

for brackets in high alloy stainless

steel, painted with enamel. “Even if

the paint falls off, it’ll never rust,” he

says. The indoor brackets are blue and

the outdoor ones orange so he can

easily tell them apart.

One of the tables can be seen at

the Kohlberg house on a bluff south

of Newcomb Hollow. Because this

one’s a “high visibility table,” says

McMahon, its Douglas fir top rests

on sculpted ash legs. Blue brackets

peek out from underneath. Through

the glass sliding doors that lead to

the porch overlooking the ocean,

another table can be seen: an outdoor

version, the top made with

three 2- by- 10 planks and the legs of

unsculpted fir.

When considering material for

his tables, McMahon doesn’t just

think of the appearance of the wood;

he considers the activities and accoutrements

that the table will support.

Coffee cups will leak, pens will press

and glide, heavy dishes will heat and

stick, elbows will rest. That’s the

“commodity” element, he says. “It

has to be suited for its function.”

In the Baroque era, carving and

decoration might give a piece of

furniture the appearance of luxury.

When modernists wanted luxury,

they changed their material.

“The fanciest table I ever made,”

McMahon says. was topped with clear

Alaskan cedar, “but it was the exact

same design.”

McMahon’s outdoor Y table at the Kohlberg’s house has unsculpted legs. The orange-painted

bracket that peeks out from under the plank top is made of stainless steel. (Photos by Agata

Storer)

A table inside the Weidlinger house has a top made from plywood coated in phenolic resin.

The sculpture on top is by Gil Franklin.

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Bathtime Under

the Stars

Old clawfoot tubs find new purpose nestled in

open- air oases of ferns and succulents

By Eve Samaha

Kai Potter discovered outdoor bathing at 13, when he visited friends who

lived in Harwich. “They had this bathtub out in the woods,” Potter says. A

fire under the tub heated the water. “I took a bath when it was snowing,”

he says. “I thought, ‘Wherever I live, for the rest of my life, I have to have an

outdoor tub.’ ”

He has kept this promise to himself. A small clawfoot bathtub is tucked in

an unheated room built against the side of his Wellfleet house. The tub, rescued

from “a dusty, creepy, haunted basement,” Potter says, came from what was

then Wellfleet’s Inn at Duck Creeke.

He used to have a different bathtub in the space — an enormous one from

the Lorenzo Dow Baker house in Wellfleet that took up much of the room. “I

downsized,” Potter says. The old tub sits upside down in his yard. “I might put

it back in,” he says. He misses its length.

Facing the tub is a small

round table with two cowhide

chairs — Potter’s “breakfast

nook,” he says. Mounted on the

wall is an outdoor shower. “The

shower is for getting clean,”

he says. “The tub is for chilling

out.”

In the summer, hanging

plants drape the walls and spread

into the tub: spider plants, staghorn

ferns, orchids, and monstera.

Despite the jungle- like

atmosphere, he says he hasn’t

noticed bugs dropping into his

bathwater.

Potter is a plantsman and

nature writer. “I feel happiest in

a space that’s full of plants,” he

says. The air always smells fresh

from the abundance of growing

things. In the late spring, summer,

and early fall, a misting

system rigged into the ceiling

comes on twice a day to water

the greenery twining through

A wall of windows serves as a windbreak to keep

Potter’s outdoor tub room cozy.

the space. “It turns foggy and

tropical in here,” Potter says.

Andy Jacob traded Wellfleet oysters for his antique bathtub. (Photos by Agata Storer)

Antique windows of various sizes form one patchwork wall. While the

window- wall is partly for aesthetics, “I also wanted it to hold some heat and

block the wind,” Potter says. “I like cozy, small spaces.”

But he also likes being able to see the sky while in the tub. “Normally, we

associate bathing with being inside and closed off,” Potter says. “It’s really

great to be able to take that ritual outside and do it while you’re immersed in

the world.”

Andy Jacob, an artist and oyster farmer, also has an antique bathtub. He

bought it in Boston, where it had occupied the bathroom of a fifth- floor walkup

in the Back Bay. A renovation crew carried the tub down to the street, where

Jacob traded Wellfleet oysters plus some cash for it. After he brought the tub

home, it sat in Jacob’s back yard for six months before he had the “funds,

friends, and time” to make it work outdoors. It was worth it, he says: “It’s luxurious

— a poor man’s Jacuzzi.”

Jacob dismantled an old wooden ramp found on his property and set aside

the wood. Then, using a mini skid loader, he and his brother- in- law, James

Kearing, built a stone retaining wall behind the house. His vision was to create

a hidden space for the tub by sending a bather through a series of small rooms.

There are no doors, Jacob says, “but my neighbors can’t see me naked.”

Jacob spends a lot of time in the ocean, so the outdoor bathing area is practical

as well as aesthetically pleasing. After oystering or surfing, he heads in

with his waders or wetsuit on

to avoid bringing sand into the

house.

A birch tree grows by the

entrance to Jacob’s bathing

chambers. Its branches gently

bend over the doorway. “You

walk through and follow these

big stone steps into the shower,

which is filled with ferns and

succulents,” he says. Beyond

that, the bathtub sits against the

stone wall. Within arm’s reach

is a little shelf for a candle. An

African mask from the Wellfleet

flea market surveys the scene

from the wall.

Jacob takes baths outside in

his “oasis” from April to December.

The best months, he

says, are September and October.

“The air is crisp, but you’re

so warm in there,” he says. “You

feel like you’re in the womb.” At

night, wine glass in hand, the

stars blazing above, “you can

hear the horned owls communicating

with each other. That’s

pretty spectacular.”

Plants creep into Kai Potter’s outdoor bathtub.

A birch tree bends over the entrance to a labyrinthine series of

little outdoor rooms that lead to Jacob’s outdoor tub.


Mini Makeovers

By Hannah Oakland

Deep colors and a warm glow bring calm

to children’s bathrooms

Kids’ bathrooms are surely not at the top of most people’s homeimprovement

wish lists. As long as it’s a room that’s functional and ready

to withstand some wear and tear, you leave it alone: whatever the decor, its

users aren’t complaining.

On the other hand, I did notice how the utilitarian white box of a bathroom

my children shared was not exactly cozy — not for them or for me. Stopping in

on their daily morning and evening routines, I realized that its spare, clang- y

brightness was setting my teeth on edge.

Here’s where one of the easiest, most affordable changes you can make can

also be the most rewarding. You’re not going to find a dark, earthy green in a

paint- store brochure on palettes for a children’s bathroom, but it really works

some magic: green balances warm and cool, and here a deep, woodsy shade feels

clean and puts us all in a tranquil mood.

I was encouraged to make a similarly bold color change on another project

soon after finishing this one. In a client’s upstairs bathroom tucked under the

eaves, deep navy lends a crisp but calm feel that’s ideal for the space. Bringing

the color from the walls through

to the cabinetry made the space seem

AFTER less cramped.

There’s no theme to these revisions

— those are easily outgrown. I

did add some small touches that are

nods to the seaside location of these

homes. Before painting, I nailed horizontal

nickel gap (it’s similar to

shiplap but with a cleaner look) that I

picked up at a local lumberyard to accent

one wall in the green room. And

gold hardware on the navy is a classic

maritime combination.

In both cases, completely replacing

the bathroom vanities with new

ones would have put me over budget.

Painting bathroom cabinets makes

the transformation just as effectively

and doesn’t require plumbing changes.

I first lightly sanded the vanities,

then applied a high- quality primer,

and finished with a few coats of semigloss

interior paint.

In the attic room, the countertop

was white with flecks of gray and

light blue. Introducing the darker

blue paint color worked fine there.

In the green bathroom, however, the

ice- blue counter and sink were going

to be hard to work with. Here, a gently

used all- white vanity, sourced from

a local online marketplace group,

was an inexpensive starting point. A

fresh coat of warm beige paint on the

Navy blue walls and cabinets in an under- the- eaves children’s bathroom show how deep shades can make a small room feel less cramped.

BEFORE

AFTER

The speckled countertop of the

original bathroom suggested

beige and light blue for this

room, but it turns out to work

beautifully with a maritime

deep navy.

BEFORE

A tiny amount of decorating

attention can make a neglected

nook like this feel like part

of the room.

Small touches, like this houseplant, make a room feel friendlier.


cabinet, modern gold knobs, and a simple swap out of the faucet

make the vanity less stark. It belongs in the room like a familiar

piece of furniture.

Larger mirrors and sleeker gold- toned fixtures warmed up

the quality of the light in both rooms. Adding an open- weave

curtain softens the edges of the green room. A big friendly

houseplant does the same for the nook in the attic space.

Looking back, it’s easy to see how these two previously pale

children’s bathrooms seemed to glare unnervingly. Their new

deep color values are still vibrant, but these are now more comfortable

spaces — as they should be. Besides, though there’s

nothing fancy or impractical here, the rooms now bridge the gap

between being spaces for children and welcoming rooms for the

adults who end up spending plenty of time in them.

AFTER

BEFORE

The children’s bathroom was bright but cold. Warmer colors make their

morning and bathtime routines calmer.

A woodsy green makes a children’s bathroom feel clean and cozy. (Photos by Hannah Oakland)

MFM studio

Interiors / Art

427 Commercial St

Provincetown

By chance or appointment

508-364-1272

Featuring work by

M.DelVisco

mdv3@comcast.net


Jeff Soderbergh’s ring chair, made from materials that will endure the weather, is “joyful,” he says. Here it hangs among cherry blossoms in Newport, R.I., not far from his Portsmouth workshop.

(Photos courtesy Jeff Soderbergh)

The Tire Swing Grows Up

Jeff Soderbergh’s ring chair is made of history

By Dorothea Samaha

The wood floors of Jeff Soderbergh’s

furniture workshop in

Portsmouth, R.I. were salvaged

from the box cars of old freight trains.

The beams that support the building,

which sits right on the water, are vintage,

too, taken from New Bedford

and Fall River factories.

In the summers, Soderbergh

shows and sells his work, and the

work of other designers and artists,

at his shop on West Main Street in

Wellfleet. He’s had that space since

2011. In 2022, he took over the rest

of the building from his wife, Natasha,

who until that year had run the

clothing store Karol Richardson there

for 30 years. Summers in Wellfleet are

“as close to a 1970s experience as we

could get for our kids,” he says. “Go

out and play, get muddy, dig holes,

catch crabs, and be home at dark.”

Hanging from a tree outside the

Wellfleet shop is a ring chair: a circular

outdoor hammock made from

steel and seasoned mahogany. It’s a

design Soderbergh says he perfected

in 2010. He’s made 150 of them

since then. Nearly everything else

that he makes is a custom piece:

knotty wooden tables, polished satin

smooth, luxuriously sculpted benches,

cutting boards and bowls that still

smell of the windfall wood they’re

carved from.

The ring chair began as a challenge:

to design an outdoor hammock

that would be “comfortable,

sculptural, and last in the New England

weather,” he says. In his first

designs, something about the hammock

shape wasn’t right: the sitter

was staring at the sky. “I wanted it to

be more social.” He drew a body in the

shape he envisioned: head up, knees

bent to support a book. Around it, he

drew the chair.

“I couldn’t believe I was drawing

a circle,” he says. “It was just so simple.”

The chair was comfortable, says

Soderbergh, and encouraged conversation,

just as he had hoped. Sitters

in it smiled: “It was like an adult tire

swing.”

For the ring of metal, Soder bergh

chose Cor- Ten steel, a material originally

used for railroad coal wagons.

Regular steel, when exposed to the

elements for a long time, rusts and

disintegrates. Cor- Ten, named for

its corrosion resistance and tensile

strength, won’t do that. It seals itself

with a rust barrier. Soderbergh found

a large supply of it left over from

shipbuilding. “I also thought it had a

beautiful surface,” he says.

He measures the steel, drills preparatory

holes, and rolls it into a hoop

using a high- pressure industrial rolling

machine. Next come the wooden

slats that, lined up as for a barrel, form

the curving seat. The wood is mahogany

from a boatbuilder in Newport.

It’s left over from a supply purchased

for a boat he’d built in the 1960s. Mahogany

is dense, says Soder bergh;

with the slats secured to the steel by

marine-grade stainless-steel screws,

the chair will endure rain and snow

for 50 to 80 years, he says.

Soderbergh grew up in Jamestown,

R.I. and graduated from the

University of Rhode Island in 1990

with a degree in anthropology. Then

he toured as the lead singer in the rock

band Toad House until the group disbanded

in 1998. In every town, he saw

architectural salvage — discarded

columns, corbels, decorative moldings,

and stained- glass windows

that, he says, “tugged at my soul.”

He made a list of the pieces he

wanted to come back for. Those became

wall assemblages, which he

began to show in galleries in New

England and Canada. But his focus

shifted: he wanted to make furniture

of his own. He started reading woodworking

manuals from the 1950s and

’60s. “I spent the next 10 years in the

library,” he says.

His Portsmouth workshop is a

museum of forgotten artifacts: beams

and bricks, pieces of buildings and

ships, glass, wood, and metal. “At one

point, I had 90,000 feet of the Coney

Soderbergh has always loved history, especially objects that tell a story.

Island boardwalk,” he says. The wood

was being replaced with synthetic

materials.

Soderbergh persuaded Brooklyn

officials to let him take the old wood.

It was ipe, a tropical hardwood so

dense it doesn’t float. “Those trees

were probably 1,000 years old when

they were cut down in the Amazon

rainforest,” he says.

He used much of the wood for the

interior of a shop he was renovating

in the city. With what was left of

the boardwalk, Soderbergh made the

seats for the first 50 ring chairs.

“The goal is to build things that

are lasting, that are generational, that

you can give to your kids and grandkids,”

he says. “To make something

that stands the test of time.”

GABBY HANNA

Your Future. My Expertise.

Gibson

Sothehy's

INTERNATIONAL REALTY

57

Bedrooms

21,565

Square Feet

4.2

Acres

Seaglass Inn & Spa

Price Upon Request

105 Bradford Street Extension, Provincetown

Perched atop a hill in Provincetown's coveted West End, Seaglass Inn & Spa offers a rare investment opportunity with stunning views and

endless potential. This 4.2-acre property includes a 57-room inn with recent upgrades, a sparkling pool, and a 2-bedroom apartment. Also

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3

Bedrooms

1,098

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Bathrooms

Price Upon Request

593 Commercial Street, Provincetown

Welcome to your private waterfront retreat in Provincetown's East End! This rare, double-wide lot features a charming cottage and a separate

studio suite, blending historic charm with modern comfort. The cottage, once home to Playwright Eugene O'Neill and later NY Times

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DISCOVER MORE. CONTACT ME TODAY.

REALTOR®, ABR®, RSPS

Gabby.Hanna@GibsonSIR.com

917.696.8952

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PROVINCETOWN

Source: X I © 2025 Sotheby's International Realty. All Rights Reserved. Sotheby's International Realtyc' is a registered trademark and used with permission. Each Sotheby's International Realty office is independently owned and operated, except those operated by Sotheby's

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