In the eyes of Ray Malone, the world is bursting with objects worthy of admiration. Suits of armor, bonsai trees, preserved insects, antique chinoiserie cabinets, Murano glass, contemporary art: if it captures his attention, he wants to collect it.
“I’ve always loved the decorative,” said Mr. Malone, 64, a former car painter who built and sold a large Australian automotive repair business. “Everything has a story and a history to it.”
Over the years, Mr. Malone amassed a wildly eclectic range of furniture, accessories and art. So when he bought a property in the mountains just east of Melbourne, Australia, 10 years ago, he wanted to build a house where he could enjoy his fascinating finds every day.
To create such a building, he tapped Dylan Farrell Design, a firm run by husband-and-wife partners Dylan and Nicolette Farrell that is based in Sydney, Australia, and has an American outpost in Quogue, N.Y.
The half-acre property, which Mr. Malone purchased for about $400,000 Australian dollars, or around $260,000, had a dilapidated shack that needed to be torn down as well as an overgrown garden. Where many people might have simply razed everything, Mr. Malone kept the best parts of both.
He pulled up and stored the shack’s Baltic pine floorboards so they could be reused in his new house, and he had the camellias and rhododendrons outside moved so he could give his new garden an immediate sense of maturity.
Then the Farrells began designing a new house inspired by Queenslander cottages from the early 1900s. The single-story, 1,600-square-foot home is wrapped by a series of porches, with a central interior hallway leading to an open living, dining and kitchen space under a vaulted ceiling.
But at the same time, Mr. Farrell said, they wanted the house to feel far more intriguing than something that was simply a reproduction of a 100-year-old building.
“The brief was to make it more James Bond hiding from a villain at his mother’s house,” Mr. Farrell said. “There were all these traditional, authentic design elements we were trying to inject into the construction process, but we also wanted to be able to carry in a contemporary chair, put it in the corner, and have it feel at home.”
They sourced more Baltic pine flooring to match the boards Mr. Malone had recovered from the previous structure and put them down with reclaimed square-head nails Mr. Farrell found in the United States. Then they gave the planks a consistent aged appearance with a custom finish made using steel wool, vinegar and tan stain.
They paneled and painted walls and ceilings, and trimmed windows and doorways with traditional casing. Playing to Mr. Malone’s passion for the decorative arts, the Farrells brought in a decorative painter to give flat surfaces more visual interest. In the living room, two layers of different ivory-colored plaster give walls a gauzy sense of depth. In the study, multiple coats of paint with iron powder, which was intentionally rusted in place, create the appearance of a deep, smoky nebula.
When they were finished with the shell of the house, the Farrells began adding Mr. Malone’s collections. Mr. Farrell framed preserved insects and butterflies in antique drawers and mounted them on the walls of a long central hallway that runs through the house.
They built custom doors around panels from a damaged Japanese folding screen depicting a scene of forest and mountains. They placed a prized patinated bronze coffee table by Philip and Kelvin LaVerne at the center of the living room by a pair of 1950s spoon-back chairs by Ico Parisi, which they left in their original green velvet. They installed candle sconces by Erik Hoglund on a wall with plans to allow dripping wax to pile up on the wood floor beneath them over time.
They found locations for Mr. Malone’s bonsai trees, some of which are more than 80 years old. And they hung works by 20th and 21st century artists such as Tom Wesselmann, Constance Stokes and John Kelly.
After beginning construction in 2017, the house was largely complete in 2020. However, when Australia went into lockdown during the pandemic, Mr. Malone suddenly wanted a cellar, both for a wine collection and for root vegetables he grows in the garden.
The Farrells obliged and had contractors dig below the newly built house to create a void for the cellar, which is now reached, secret agent-style, through a motorized hatch in the hallway floor above. Lined in more patinated Baltic pine and equipped with custom cabinet pulls Mr. Farrell fashioned from animal horns, the space feels about a 100 years old, even though it’s brand-new.
“It’s a little bit of a man cave,” Mr. Malone said.
The house was finally completed in 2022 at a cost of about $1.5 million Australian dollars, or about $970,000. Mr. Malone has since been working on the garden, implementing a plan designed by Paul Bangay. “I love it and will never sell it,” Mr. Malone said of his new house. “It’s full of a lifetime of memories.”
The post One Easy Rule: If You Admire It, It’s Worth Collecting appeared first on New York Times.
