A landscape of memory
Created for my family home in Connecticut, this fireplace surround takes its cues from the river running through the property and a 19th-century Dutch tile panel at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Working as a family, we assembled a collection of landscapes and places drawn from our shared history. Coastal walks, local architecture, animals and archival research informed the illustrations, while discreet details—like the salt pond where we learned to sail as children—give individual tiles a more personal meaning.
Year
2026
Drawing from the pastResearch extended from family photographs and memories to local historical societies, building a visual language rooted in the Connecticut landscape. Rather than recreating a single view, the composition brings together fragments of place and memory within an intricate border inspired by historic Dutch tilework.
Made to belong
A full dry layout was completed on site, where a small border was developed to accommodate revised dimensions of the gas insert.
Though created for a new house, the finished fireplace was designed to feel inherited as if the tiles, and the stories held within them, had always been there.