Bridge For Design April 2015 Bridge For Design April 2015 | Page 78

candor. ‘I don’t cook, so I want it to be like another room – I want
to be entertained, I want things to look at.’ Jaklitsch and McGeehan
came up with the idea of the tiles, and Duffy said yes right away.
He also selected the yellow Aga stove, which he adores – its looks,
anyway. ‘I’ve never touched it,’ he says flatly.
And then there’s his stuff, as Duffy modestly refers to his Southeast
Asian temple figures, Clarice Cliff ceramics, scrimshaw, midcentury Provincetown art, and blue-and-white china. He was happy
to let Jaklitsch and McGeehan set off his collections to their best
advantage. ‘If it were up to me, I would have my things everywhere,’
he says. ‘My whole house would look like the library mantel.’
Still, it’s Duffy who pulls the disparate parts of the puzzle together
to form a clear picture. You might also say it’s Provincetown. This
quirky bohemian property is in many ways as good an expression
of the beach town’s past as any painstakingly restored Colonial. ‘I
wanted to take this place back to my memory of P-town from when
I was a kid,’ he says. ‘It was very hippieish – all these writers and
artists. I still feel that way here. You don’t need a car, and everyone
is chill.’ It may not be everybody’s idea of historic restoration, but
to each his own.
After all, isn’t that what the Mayflower was all about?

ABOVE: The beach side of the house was transformed with a large
mahogany and glass facade
LEFT: Charles Hawthorne’s Boy With Fish hangs above a vintage Paul McCobb
settee on the landing; the walls are painted in Benjamin Moore’s Abstracta

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Bridge for Design April 2015