Past Perfect

Tory Burch has brought new life to a storied Antigua home. It was, as Hamish Bowles discovers, a labor of love.

At the cusp of the 1960s, the legendary tastemaker, gardener, and cultural philanthropist Rachel “Bunny” Mellon acquired a handsome plot of land that hovers over an azure bay on the Caribbean island of Antigua. Here the architect H. Page Cross created a series of elegant pavilions decorated by Mellon with the celebrated Billy Baldwin. Although unrestrained by finances, Mellon’s perfectionism was subtle: She instructed one of her designers to make the items that graced the interior look as though they had been brought “down from the attic.” But she also insisted that imperfect potato chips be removed from their bowls. “It plays at unpretentiousness,” wrote Vogue staffer Alison Harwood in an effusively enthusiastic report on the house to then editor Diana Vreeland, “pretending to be as casual as the blue denim wrap-around skirt and matching floppy-brimmed cloche devised for Mrs. Mellon’s working costume by Mainbocher.”

The furniture for the house was slipcovered in D. D. Tillett’s hand-printed cottons, and the canopy beds were hung with Madeleine Porthault’s flowered sheets. The silvered shingles of the roofs were made from Brazilian wood, the terraces underfoot hewn from coral stone. Oak floors were scrubbed with salt water to age them, and then painted to imitate stone paving, like those in Swedish country mansions. The pathways that trellised the fragrant herb garden outside the chatelaine’s bedroom and in the far-flung potager were made from bricks imported by the British, who used them as ballast for their ships. (They sailed home with rum.) Mellon also nurtured local craftspeople, who created the handmade clay pots and the rustic wattle fencing, and established a carpentry workshop that could replicate antique furniture. (It’s still flourishing.)