Keith Meacham
photo by Wiff Harmer
If you could have a second home anywhere, where would you live? I’m lucky enough to have a second home in Sewanee, TN, and I’d choose the same place all over again given the choice. After living in a very simple brick 1930s Georgian Revival there for nearly 20 years, we’re about to build a new-old house overlooking a protected valley called Lost Cove facing northwest. I’m so excited that we’ll be working with architect James Carter of Birmingham and my longtime friend and collaborator, landscape architect Ben Page of Nashville.
Tell us about your childhood bedroom? I first shared a room with my sister, and Mama took some old brown furniture my grandmother had given her and painted it a high lacquer bright white, so we had two twin four poster beds with very frilly floral pillow shams and white ruched dust skirts. I still love the look of white painted furniture.
What’s the first investment piece you ever bought for your house? I always laugh that my friend (and later my partner in Reed Smythe & Co) Julia Reed bossed me through my 20s and 30s like I was Pygmalion, insisting that I get rid of this and buy that, and I always did exactly what she told me in those years and she never steered me wrong. One day she called me up from Lucullus in New Orleans and told me she’d found my dining room chairs and that if I didn’t buy them she would. They were French neo-classical chairs in walnut with painted black details, upholstered in peacock blue velvet. I still have them thirty years later and they still look great.
In the history of design, if you could hire any designer, who would it be? I love Nancy Lancaster’s country house chic, but I think I’d probably hire Albert Hadley because his interiors were impeccable and I know so many people here in Nashville who grew up in houses that he designed and said he was a gem to work with.
No room is complete without books!
People think of me as organized but I am really living in chaos.
Things you omit from:
A flower arrangement: Carnations
An hors d’oeuvre platter: Anything too big to eat in one bite
A bar cabinet: Gimmicky bourbon brands – Maker’s Mark is just fine
A song for:
Dinner at home: Van Morrison, Stranded
Working at your desk: Bach Brandenberg Concerto 5 in D Major – so joyful
Going for a run: Maggie Rogers, Back in my Body
Biggest Vice? Biting my fingernails
If you were on an Ambien high and internet shopping, what would you buy? Not really an IF. I’ve definitely done some drinking and shopping in my time and it always ends with a big box arriving a few weeks later filled with a set of porcelain plates, a pretty platter, a quirky vase, or even a couple of one-off dishes I then use on side tables as ashtrays or ring dishes. I’m a total sucker for Old Paris as well as anything that comes from Eric Goujou’s divine Paris shop, La Tuile a Loup, that specializes in French pottery. @latuilealoup. I don’t need one more dish in my life but I can’t stop.
Do your clothes reflect your design sensibility, if so, how? I really don’t like clothes, so I go for the simplest thing around – some Nili Lotan black pants and a sweater from the Row. Buying stuff for the house doesn’t require a crash diet or shaving inches off your thighs, so I much prefer thinking about what fabric I might put on a chair than what I might put on body. If there is any connection between my clothes and my house, it’s that both are classic with clean lines.
Who is your star crush? My friend Faith Hill who has recently been wowing us with her acting chops in 1883, the prequel to Yellowstone.
What is the one thing you would never decorate your home with, but don’t detest when you see others do it? Treillage
If there were a fire, and you could only keep one design book, what would it be?
David Hicks Living with Design
For posterity, what would you like your work to be known for? Not sure I’ve got enough work to be concerned with posterity but I’d want anything I do to be honest and authentic to me – nothing gimmicky.
photo by Wiff Harmer
A Few Favorites:
Movie: Cinema Paradiso
Book: Anthony Trollope The Way We Live Now
Scent: Tom Ford Jasmin Rouge
The fabric you always come back to: Robert Kime Tree of Life
Dream project: Building my own Tennessee Greek Revival house
Meal: Sweetbreads at Chez Georges in Paris
Drink: A glass of really cold Billecart Salmon
Hotel: Hotel Santa Caterina in Amalfi
Travel Destination: Oaxaca, Mexico. Anywhere at all in France.
Artist: Van Gogh to look at; Sally Mann from my own collection
A cause near and dear to me: Horizons National, summer educational and extracurricular programming for underserved kids
Thing to collect obsessively: 18th century hand-painted wooden and papier mache snuff boxes
Era in the history of design: 18th century
Museum: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston
Paint Color that always looks great: The deep blue teal of my husband’s study that was copied from a Rogers and Goffington wool fabric – very close to F&B Hague blue but way better
Favorite person to follow on Instagram: @sean_anthony_pritchard
Dogs, Cats, or No Pets? 2 English Springer Spaniels
