Greydon House, a year-and-a-half-old hotel on Nantucket, has been steered clear of the shoals of nautical kitsch. The interiors are meant to conjure up the collections of generations of whaling captain owners, who hauled home boatloads of souvenirs from the tropics, the Silk Road and European harbors. New York– and Boston-based owners, Faros Properties, collaborated with Nantucket architecture firm Emeritus and New York designers Roman & Williams to tuck 18 varied rooms into an 1850s gabled building and a new mansard-roof wing with window boxes spilling flowers.
Above: An entryway was created in a new hyphen connector between an 1850s white clapboarded building (right) and a new taupe mansard-roof wing (left) with overflowing window boxes. Above: In the guest rooms, Roman & Williams scalloped the backs of custom beds, set vintage phones on the nightstands, and grooved the paneling in a nod to cabin walls inside seaworthy ships. Above: Light fixtures with pulleys, weights, and loops hark back to mechanisms on old clocks and lamps. Vintage seascape paintings are scattered around. Much of the furniture is either vintage or custom. Above: Oversize hanging pegs resemble sturdy nautical knobs, a ceramic spice jar on a nightstand gives a whiff of far-flung trade routes, and a driftwood fragment does not overwhelm a bathroom shelf. Above: Showers are lined in maritime scenes made of Portuguese tiles, and sconces on the eaves have an air of recycled industrial corridor lights. The boxy and unpainted sink vanities, reminiscent of 19th-century farmhouse washstands, leave glossy pipes exposed. Above: Guests can admire jars of beach finds and fill journals with travel notes at an unpretentious desk in weathered dark paint and a red-stained chair—the kind of gentle mismatch that seafarers would have created out of heirlooms and purchases. Above: Marine themes—knotted ropes, seashells, images of sailboats and watery horizons—tie together the guest rooms and public spaces. Above: An armchair with chamfered corners has a sense of central European sturdiness, alongside a side table with ziggurat motifs that hint at Persian origins. Above: Guests check in amid planes of woodwork with a convincing patina and a colorful Moorish frieze. Above: A porch’s corded armchairs are arrayed around an octagonal table with Islamic arches.
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