It's All Relatives

Designer Ellen Van Dusen and her siblings update a hand-hewn cabin into a pattern-happy family getaway

- HANNAH MARTIN

When designer Ellen Van Dusen renovated her Brooklyn town house in 2018, she didn't have to look far to find a couple of trustworthy tenants: her brothers, Dave and Henry.

“We borrow spices from each other all the time,” says the founder of home goods line Dusen Dusen. So when she set out to buy a country house, the solution came easily. Why not make it a family affair?

All three fell for a funky Sullivan County cabin, hand-built over decades by the postwar artist and textile designer Anthony Ballatore, whose nature-inspired fabrics for Jack Lenor Larsen can be found in the collection of the Cooper Hewitt. Ballatore felt like a kindred soul for Ellen, herself known for lighthearted patterns. “We all immediately knew it was the one,” she says of the rambling cedar-clad structure, which radiated creative energy. Ballatore even carved smiley faces into some tree stumps.