Hunt & Gathered

In Connecticut’s pastoral Litchfield County, architect Shamir Shah and artist Malcolm Hill transform a 1940s lodge into a polished rural retreat filled with vintage furnishings and objects collected from near and far.

WHILE many designers these days layer minimalist interiors with multicultural, globe-trotting touches— a colorful Rajasthani block textile here, an antique inlaid-mother-of-pearl commode from Thailand there—architect Shamir Shah comes to his complex and worldly modern style with a rare authenticity. Raised in Kenya by Indian parents who owned a coffee farm there, he studied architecture at Yale, then moved to New York. The cosmopolitan edge he brings to his architectural projects may be much in vogue, but he is the real thing.

For five years, Shah and his partner, Texas-born artist Malcolm Hill, spent summers in the Pines on Fire Island, but eventually, they grew tired of the social whirl and the lack of a year-round getaway. So several years ago, they bought a weekend home in Cornwall, Connecticut.