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If an Uzbekistani hoarded wealth - hunting fling is n’t in your immediate future , not to worry : Michael Trapp ’s get you covered . The Connecticut - based antiques dealer and designer on a regular basis traipses the world ’s bazaars and antique fairs , bringing back Tsung Dynasty shipwreck pot , teak Dutch Colonial garden benches , and 18th – century Portuguese impress bed drape , among other unique finds . Much of the bounty fill his West Cornwall shop , but a fair fate goes home with him , at least for a time .
Pictured here are Green Glazed Bonero Pots ( $ 235/$265 ) . " These beautifully candy 19th - and twentieth - century potbelly make great containers for annual or herbaceous plant , and summate a nice accent coloration . " Photo by : Rachel Schwarz . SEE MORE PHOTOS OF THIS GARDEN
Home , in Trapp ’s case , means homes : He admits to a meek renovation obsession , which is why he has three residences within a 12 - second radius . While each property has a distinct personality , all showcase a love of the natural world and a liquid connexion between interior and exterior living .
A peaceful reflecting pool in Trapp ’s West Cornwall garden is framed with Chinese Juipers . Photo by : Tim Street - Porter . SEE MORE photograph OF THIS GARDEN
Trapp ’s original West Cornwall base , an 1820s Greek Revival , still houses his shop on the ground floor . “ It ’s quite baroque , ” he explains , “ a locker of rarity . ” This place , complete with a whimsical Trapp - designed garden full of lush planting and architectural shard , became so overrun with visitors to the memory board that in the mid-’90s he relocated to a nearby cattle farm - style mountain house . There he install multilevel pit terraces , as well as a 900 - square - foot deck that use up advantage of a spectacular view . Trapp ’s most recent leverage , a 1780s farmhouse , is the spacious of the three , as prove by a pilot whale skeleton hang from the great - room cap . “ It has that ‘ the castle is too big to furnish and they ran out of money a generation ago ’ feel , ” he says .
Trapp boldly blends different elan and centuries in each of his dwelling . As he is doting of saying , he enjoy to juxtapose one-time with aged . In West Cornwall ’s airy dining elbow room , for example , the table crafted from a seventeenth – one C English sidewalk is top with a Ming dynasty fishbowl and drape with an embroidered textile from the -African Kuba folk . A 19th - century Gallic chandelier hangs from the ceiling , and early twentieth – century random access memory skulls line the rampart .
compact with old geezer , Trapp ’s West Cornwall pool house reduplicate as a " small natural story museum . " Photo by : Tim Street - Porter . SEE MORE photograph OF THIS GARDEN
The result is a spirited eclecticism , but it ’s alfresco where Trapp ’s genre go truly clamber . The West Cornwall garden , designed as a serial of rooms connected by small stone stairway and elegantly crumbling balustrades , is full of surprises : terra - cotta olive crude oil jars line this path , while brainless statues are tucked into that greenery . Weatherworn sett paths , laid by Trapp , give a timeless atmosphere to the garden , and even the Lucy Stone lap pool , installed in 2001 , feels centuries honest-to-god .
Though his own garden is one of a kind , Trapp ’s plan sensibility inform all of his projects , from historic Connecticut home plate to the interior court of Robert De Niro ’s Greenwich Hotel in Manhattan . dawn on the photograph gallery above to con how you may recreate Trapp ’s unique style in your own backyard .
