The Water Issue : Sea Salted

When an antiques-loving couple stumbles across a weathered 1800s cottage on Cape Cod Bay, they embrace the knotty pine, flaking paint, and crusty charm, evoking a patina-lover’s battle cry: Don’t give up the chip.

Everyone in Province town, Massachusetts, knows “Blue Shutters.” The weather-beaten gray cottage with the telltale shutters has been a local landmark since it was built in 1840 out on its own small wharf reaching into Cape Cod Bay. Grocer N.C. Brooks built the house facing the water because that’s where all the action was—a steady stream of fishermen and merchants shouted all day long about their hauls.

Post Brooks, the house sat empty for around 12 years and became something of a local curiosity—locals made it their business to peek through the privets and create their own narratives until artists Florence and Jacques Salvan came to town in 1953. They brought with them a decidedly nautical theme. Inspired by the shutters and the view, the couple refinished and painted the floors a bright blue, added porthole windows to their galley kitchen, and incorporated murals depicting coastal scenery. (Florence even painted a lobster dinner on the icebox.)