Design

People who peruse the New York Times Best Seller List and go to movies probably know that Frances Mayes, former chairman of the Creative Writing Department at San Francisco State University, gained a new life and popular literary success when she wrote, with her husband Edward Mayes, the story of the renovation of a run-down villa in the ancient Tuscan town of Cortona. What began in 1996 as a book well acclaimed in the San Francisco Bay region, burgeoned into a national best seller a year later with creative marketing by second publisher Broadway Books. Under the Tuscan Sun had sold one million copies in 1999 when Mayes and Broadway brought out a sequel, Bella Tuscany. Since then, Mayes has continued to write about her deep love of Villa Bramasole, of all aspects of Tuscan life and culture and of its incomparable people, with a depth of knowledge and appreciation which is singularly enjoyable and informative. Under the Tuscan Sun has now been translated into 18 languages, including Chinese. In Tuscany and Bringing Tuscany Home, two large format books replete with luxurious visuals have added pleasure to her books with photographs that complement Frances and Edward Mayes’ spare but lyrical writing styles.

Tuscany in High Point

With this background, I enter the tall doors of Drexel Heritage Furniture Industries Inc.’s showroom at North Carolina’s High Point International Furniture Market and feel I am being admitted backstage while a play is in rehearsal. The massive entry hall, with its sweeping staircase, is stacked with furniture, workmen’s tools and, scattered here and there, evidence of projects. All this beautiful clutter gradually begins to make sense when Melanie Dunn, Drexel Heritage Vice President for Visual Merchandising, ushers me into an adjacent alcove to introduce the innovative furniture line that is the result of a successful collaboration between Drexel Heritage designers and Frances Mayes. The collection is to celebrate what she calls “the voluptuousness of Tuscan life,” a subject that has made her a best-selling author, sought-after speaker, culinary expert and now design consultant and serious businesswoman.

The alcove housing the furniture line features a floor laid in softly hued oversized old brick, accented with narrow brick bands cut from the originals. Dark wooden beams overhead add to a sense of rusticity and warmth. The walls are inset with floor to ceiling open cases. “We created this room as the reception hall for Frances Mayes At Home in Tuscany furniture line when Drexel Heritage introduced it in 2003. That was the same year the movie Under the Tuscan Sun with actress Diane Lane was released,” says Dunn. “The cases were filled with wine, and the Tavola for a Feast, a long rectangular table with splayed stretchers and metal scrollwork, was placed in the center and set with a guest registry book. The table, a favorite design of Mayes’, is based on a piece at the Il Falconiere, a hotel in Cortona near Bramasole.”

So how did a San Francisco-based writer-teacher connect with a major North Carolina-based furniture manufacturer and, in less than a year, create a collection that became the company’s best selling line? “ Frances was working with a licensure firm in New York,” says Dunn. “Three years ago they contacted us about doing a furniture line based on her Tuscan experience. Our president, Jeff Young, had recently come on board charged with giving Drexel Heritage a complete change of direction. He was intrigued with the idea.” The contact came, a telephone conversation was held with Mayes and her husband, who were in Italy preparing for the filming of Under the Tuscan Sun, and an invitation to visit them at Bramasole was extended. Jeff Young, chief designer Michael Black, and their wives packed up sketchpads and caught a plane to Rome.

“We liked each other immediately,” recalls Mayes during a recent stop in the Triangle to visit several old friends and to meet with her new acquaintances and business associates. “I had studied Italian design for years,” she added, “and had collected a portfolio of about 60 or 70 design ideas, including pictures, photographs, drawings and my personal antiques. I brought them out and we went to work.” On an expedition to one of the author’s favorite antique shops in nearby Arezzo, Young and Black purchased an 18th-century sideboard that became the signature piece of the collection. Mayes remembers that the surface of the wood was so compelling that they and their guests couldn’t resist stroking the piece, enjoying the irregularity of the hand-planed surfaces and the patina developed by repeated application—over two centuries— of beeswax. When the collection Frances Mayes at Home in Tuscany was displayed for the first time, the antique sideboard and the Drexel Heritage reproduction were placed facing each other. Even Dunn asked, “Which is the antique?”

Semi-Customized

“This collection is distinctive for many reasons,” says Dunn, who describes the furniture as semi-customized, an innovation in the industry. Within the cases of the large pieces, such as the sideboards, armadios (the Italian word for armoire), credenzas and chests, the interiors can be arranged in a variety of ways. For example, the signature piece, the Arezzo Credenza, which features three narrow drawers above three carved cabinet doors, can be arranged to contain three pullout drawers with a silver insert in the center. It can also be built with open shelves instead of cabinets or drawers, or styled as a dresser with nine pullout drawers and a jewelry tray in the top right drawer. “The credenza top is available in a contrasting finish or in light or dark marble,” says Dunn.

We moved from the Arezzo Credenza to another piece, which is very personal and characteristic of Mayes’ ability to integrate design with an almost visceral sense of place. The Bramasole Armadio stands 10 feet tall and is topped by an elaborate round pediment inset with ornamental carving resembling the curly ironwork in Bramasole’s front door fanlight. Like the other large case pieces, the interior can be designed as a classic armoire, with shelving, a clothing bar and drawers, or as an entertainment center or bar cabinet. The fourth choice for the Bramasole Armadio is the one the Mayeses have in their California house, a wine cabinet with a wine cooler set in place of a lower drawer.

The selection of woods and finishes for the At Home in Tuscany collection is quite various, offering warm wood tones from light to dark, and, surprisingly, four choices of color. All are available with a crackle finish or edged in antique silver or gold. From a sample box, Dunn chose a square of wood finished in red and edged in gold. My favorite, a pale luminous gray which Mayes recently added to the palette, shows to spectacular advantage when edged in gilt and used as the finish on the appropriately named Magnificent Bookcase for First Editions.

Though the scale of much of the

collection is large and luxurious—an octagonal conversation table, for example, measures 60 inches by 60 inches—there are many smaller pieces based on favorite antiques Mayes has collected or on designs acquired during her extensive travels. Chests with romantic names like The Lacemaker’s Chest, The Pompeian Bird and Flower Chest, and The Chest for Love Letters would settle easily into most decors and settings. Tables and consoles, chairs, sofas, vanities and a charming desk, The Most Beautiful Desk from Montalcino, would add grace to any room.

Of special importance to the At Home in Tuscany collection is the bed, which in Tuscan tradition is selected by the bridal couple and used throughout their life together. Mayes and Drexel Heritage have developed an amazing array of beautiful designs. There is the ornate ironwork of the Florentine Ring Bed; the open lattice work of the Bee Keeper’s Bed; the elegant leather or carved wood panels used in the Tuscan Padrone’s Bed; and the Tuscan Wedding Bed. The headboard of The Bramasole Bed is reminiscent of the Etruscan wave pattern the Mayeses have used as a decorative border in one of the rooms in Bramasole. The curvilinear pattern is echoed in the added ornament and scrolled feet of the footboard.

To coordinate with the At Home in Tuscany beds, Mayes worked with Drexel Heritage to create and package five coordinated sets of bed coverings, including everything from sheets to fringed shawl throws. The fabrics are lusciously tactile with raised patterns of contrasting colors in the linen pillow shams and duvets, and a stonewashed texture in the matelasse cotton coverlets. Dunn traveled to Italy to work with Mayes to develop the collection. The pair spent five hours examining fabrics and choosing colors at the venerable family-owned firm of Busatti. Sferra Brothers, a New York-based family–owned company, provides the fabrics for the five bedding sets that employ a subtle palette of yellow, mustard, terracotta, moss, wheat, slate and ivory. “We have added rugs by Miresco to the collection,” says Dunn. “ Frances loves all textiles, the result, she says, of her family having been in the cotton mill business.”

The addition of other exclusive licensees for the Frances Mayes At Home in Tuscany Collection is essential to the creation of the total environment and representative lifestyle which Frances Mayes relates in her story. Wildwood, a Rocky Mount, North Carolina company, is producing lamps for the collection, and LaneVenture, a sister company to Drexel Heritage, introduced a line of outdoor furniture. Mayes is particularly enthusiastic: “Not only were we able to take my often rusted antique treasures and turn them into a lovely line of garden furnishings,” says Mayes, “but we are using the Sunbrella fabrics for outdoor cushion covers. The fabrics drain off water but are so beautiful you want to use them inside.”

Another successful collaboration is with Vietri, the family-owned North Carolina company that has become internationally known for its Italian ceramic dinnerware and decorative and utilitarian accessories, all of which are coordinated with place settings, table linens, and glass and barware. Vietri has worked with Mayes to create two dinnerware patterns, several serving pieces, and decorative ceramics for the garden. The soft white background of the Bramasole pattern is decorated with hand-painted images of the houses and cypress trees of Tuscany rendered in apricot, the color of the weathered stucco on Bramasole’s walls. The Locanda pattern is inspired by the rustic tavern-ware of 12th-century Italy and symbolizes hospitality and welcome. Each piece is accessorized by finger marks and Italian writing.