House Fabulous

YANKEE INGENUITY: MICHAEL TRAPP'S CONNECTICUT HOME

BY JANE GARMEY

Dealer and garden designer Michael Trapp revives a derelict Connecticut Colonial to serve as a singular showcase for his diverse global finds

To Step into Michael Trapp 's house is to be surrounded by an astonishing mix of furniture, objects, and textiles from all over the world. 

It's an Aladdin's cave, and its style is hard to categorize. Some people restore; Trapp reinvents. When the theatrical is called for, no one does it better. But if the situation requires something practical, he's equally adept.

LIVING & DINING AREA

Trapp is generally acknowledged as one of the earliest proponents of bringing garden statuary, architectural fragments, and anything metal, from fencing to furniture, indoors. He owns a celebrated antiques store in West Cornwall, Connecticut. He opened shop in 1990 and soon became an essential port of call for many of the biggest names in design-Bunny Williams, Oscar de la Renta, and Diane von Furstenberg are all regular customers- not to mention the many homeowners in surrounding Litchfield County who turn to him for objects and inspiration. His quirky aesthetic and his affinity for what he calls "making magic" have also led to an ever-growing interiors and garden-design business.

SITTING AREA

Even by Trapp's standards, the house was a wreck. "It had been assessed at zero value when I bought it—and rightfully so," he says. After redoing the plumbing and electricity, he kept the front of the house, with two rooms up and two rooms down, virtually unchanged. However, he has entirely rebuilt the later addition at the back. "At first, I thought I would simply redo the floors, but the foundations were abysmal, and the sills were rotted out," he says. Removing the interior walls revealed a surprisingly large footprint, and by dropping the floor three feet and taking down a low-ceilinged second story, Trapp has transformed the space into a vast cathedral-height living room and kitchen that lead to a bedroom and bath.

MASTER BEDROOM

In 2007, Trapp purchased an 18th-century eyebrow Colonial farmhouse in Sharon, Connecticut, with a warren of tiny rooms that had been added on in the 19th century when the place became an inn. The house had been abandoned, and his only reason for buying it was that it came with two enormous barns, ideal for warehousing his large inventory of columns, furniture, urns, and wood and stone flooring brought back from his travels throughout Asia and Europe. Initially, he had no intention of reclaiming the house, but after undertaking extensive work to fix up the barns, Trapp concluded that it would be risky to store his merchandise next to an abandoned house, so he decided to make the place habitable and move in.

LIBRARY

A 17th-century English tapestry and a section of a Turkish tent are displayed in the front library; the vase is a 19th-century Spanish olive oil jar, the ottoman was custom-made in Bali, and the rug is Persian.

LIBRARY CABINET

The floor of his oversize living room is Belgian bluestone, first used, Trapp explains, as ship ballast in the 17th-century spice trade and then installed as a floor in an 18th-century Dutch Colonial building in Sumatra, from whence it was salvaged and brought back by him. A collection of Gaudy Welsh china, housed in a display case fronted by two 19th-century windows, rubs shoulders with a shaman's medicine bag from Borneo, a carved Japanese netsuke in the shape of a human skull, and a 19th-century Italian lava-stone bracelet. But the room's arresting focal point is the 20-foot-long whale skeleton from Borneo that Trapp brought back from Indonesia and hung over the large dining room table. The table, Trapp explains, "is French, but a little complicated." In fact, it's a vintage Trapp creation, a 16th-century table to which he has added 18th-century legs from a French monastery and a top of antique stone pavers found in Montpellier.

LIVING ROOM

A double-sided staircase effects the transition from the old house to the new. Presiding over the interior doorway are two plaster Gothic angels, deaccessioned several years ago by New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and purchased by Trapp at a Sotheby's sale. One of them had been dropped by an auction house employee and broke into myriad pieces. It languished in Trapp's cellar until he decided to glue the bits together. "Elmer's works really well on plaster," he remarks nonchalantly.

GUEST ROOM

A passageway connects the living room to Trapp's bedroom, where a 19th-century teak Dutch Colonial four-poster faces a root sculpture from Borneo set atop a dresser that was bought by Trapp's parents in Berlin, when they were first married.

Outdoors, Trapp has created three raised stone terraces that serve as an effective transition to the landscape surrounding the house. The largest of them is huge, and Trapp has filled it with pots of spiky succulents and used only a green palette—"simpler and more interesting," he explains. Furnished with two oversize tables and Dutch Colonial teak benches and armchairs from Indonesia, it is the ideal spot for summer entertaining.

MASTER BATH

The master bath's tub and fittings are by Cheviot, the stone sink is 18th-century French, and the hanging fixture at left is by Fortuny.

Interior and garden designer Michael Trapp, on the terrace of his home in Sharon, Connecticut.

TERRACE

Trapp designed the French limestone table on the terrace, and the Dutch Colonial teak armchairs and benches from Java are topped with cushions made in Bali.

Elle Decor