This story begins with a rundown cottage on a Maine island in the 1980s. On January 1, 1984, interior designer and painter Heidi Gerquest moved to Maine in the midst of a snowstorm. Gerquest, who hails from a family of artists, was 22 at the time. She had graduated from Hamilton College with a degree in art and was working as a painter specializing in custom wall motifs with big, exaggerated designs. “They might actually be back in style today,” she says with a laugh. Although the wall-painting business was paying the bills, she was ready for a bigger challenge in her new state.

With the help of her parents, Gerquest bought a deserted cottage on Peaks Island to test her mettle. “I really wanted to do a whole house,” she says. “I bought the cottage and fixed it up with the idea that I wasn’t going to spend more than 50 bucks on any one piece of furniture.” Along with several friends, Gerquest transformed the abandoned structure into an enviable residence, which she then entered into Metropolitan Home’s “Home of the Year” competition. The house not only won one of the competition’s categories but went on to be featured in numerous design-focused publications, pushing Gerquest into the national spotlight. “I just had a career all of a sudden,” she says, “without ever really intending to be an interior designer.”

Nearly 40 years later, Gerquest, who now lives in Freeport, has worked on projects around the world for clients of all backgrounds. The buzz around that first project on Peaks helped her to land big clients in New York City while still living in Maine, where she was raising her family and continuing to paint, selling her work at Greenhut Galleries in Portland and Leighton Gallery in Blue Hill, among others. During that time, Gerquest’s parents followed her from Riverside, Connecticut, and settled in Freeport, where in 1999 they built a large barn to serve as both a garage and a workshop for Gerquest’s father, who liked to restore wooden boats. When her parents decided to sell the barn in 2018, Gerquest and her partner, chef Johnny Walker, who has worked at venerable Portland establishments Local 188, Sonny’s, and Salvage BBQ, took on the project. The couple sold their home in South Freeport Village and moved into the building, which was considerably smaller than they were used to. “The downstairs was this big, raw cement space that my dad had used as his workshop. No finishing, no heat,” says Gerquest. “Upstairs was a little studio apartment that they rented out.”

The couple immediately began renovating the building, putting in an addition with a guest bedroom, a bathroom, and a mudroom. The main room, which had been the workshop, became a joint living room, dining room, and kitchen. They covered the cement floors, installed a gas fireplace, and thanks to Walker’s passion for cooking, equipped the kitchen for professional meal preparation. The upstairs apartment became the main bedroom, which also houses Gerquest’s office and the couple’s exercise bike. When COVID hit in early 2020, Walker, who was ready for a new project, retired from the restaurant business and threw himself into transforming the property’s outdoor space. With the help of Gerquest’s daughter, who was living with the couple for the first few months of the pandemic, Walker turned the dirt lot into lawn and gardens, accessible from the home through two large French doors that open onto a composite cement patio.

During the renovation, Gerquest and Walker decided to leave the transom over the barn doors but replace all the other windows. They kept the original structure’s height, accentuated by a large pulley hanging from a steel beam in the ceiling that slides back and forth, which Gerquest’s father had used to lift heavy objects. “We keep meaning to hang a mobile from it, or something cool like a chair,” she says. “But then we decided that our kids, and friends who have kids that are pretty wild, might go right through the window on the chair if they have too much fun flying back and forth!”

The focal point of the space became the barn doors, which look the same from the outside but no longer function. Instead, they are covered in white shiplap and now serve as a gallery space in the large main room of the home. “When I design somebody’s house,” says Gerquest, “if the client doesn’t have a starting place in their own mind, I’ll ask them to find an object that they feel attached to or that they feel reflects them, and we build from there. In my case, the starting point of this home was my art collection as a whole.” The wall, which measures roughly 10 by 12 feet, is filled with artwork from Gerquest’s friends and family. Included in the mix are a sculpture by her grandmother, a painting by her aunt, and works by now-famous artists like Edith Varian Cockroft (who studied painting in France under Matisse) that her grandfather, a ceramicist and an engineer by trade, received while building kilns for members of an artists’ community in Sloatsberg, New York, in the 1930s. Pieces by friends are also nestled into the mix, including photography by Gerquest’s first husband, Tonee Harbert, and works by his partner, Shoshanna White, both of whom Gerquest considers to be dear friends.

For Gerquest, her latest home is a reflection of her community in Maine. In addition to the artwork that represents her friends and family, the majority of the work on the home itself was also done by friends, down to the electrical wiring. While Gerquest and Walker didn’t intend to wind up in Freeport, since the majority of their friends are up the coast or in Portland, the couple is happy to stay put for now. Looking to the future, Gerquest and Walker have started a joint design project on a home near Brittany, France. Spending three months on, three months off between Maine and Europe, the couple is slowly working on renovations of this passion project. The ultimate goal is to retire spending half the year in France and, of course, half the year in Maine.

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The post Inside an Interior Designer’s Renovated Barn-Turned-Home in Freeport appeared first on The Maine Mag.

(Clockwise from top left:)

Kari Radasch
Earthenware Mug
$68 // kariradasch.com

Ayumi Horie
Germ Cup
$175 // ayumihorieshop.com

Patrick Coughlin
Mug
$45 // patrickcoughlin.com

Whitney Gill
Brushstroke Mug
$34 // whitneygill.com

Elizabeth Benotti
Pinstripe Mug in Swell
$58 // elizabethbenotti.com

C&M Ceramics
Tie Dye Camp Mug in Mango
$64 // cmceramicstudio.com

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The post Maine-Made Mugs appeared first on The Maine Mag.

When Hannah Martin was pregnant with her son, she was sensitive to fragrances and discovered that most candles gave her headaches. She had trouble finding simple, lightly scented candles at a reasonable price point, so she decided to try making her own.

At the time, Martin was crafting her own line of jewelry and selling it at a handful of local shops. She began selling candles under her brand Near and Native at a few of the stores. She expanded to more and more businesses, and eventually she stopped making jewelry and focused entirely on home fragrances.

As Near and Native’s number of retailers grew, so did its production needs. Martin had been making the candles in the basement of her Portland home, and in June 2020 she moved into a 600-square-foot studio in Westbrook’s Dana Warp Mill. By the beginning of 2021, Near and Native had outgrown its small space in the mill and moved into a larger unit with a showroom and an expansive production studio.

Before starting Near and Native, Martin worked in corporate retail. She did buying and product development for Urban Outfitters and later moved to San Francisco to help launch the Gap’s Piperlime brand. But after 12 years of working in a corporate environment, she was ready for a change. “It was a really good thing for us for years until it didn’t serve us any longer, and it was time to move on,” she says. Martin and her husband, who worked in tech in San Francisco, had friends and family in Maine and had visited the state over the years, including for their honeymoon, so they packed up and moved east.

After arriving in Portland in 2017, Martin had an interview at another corporate retail company. The interview went so poorly that it spurred her to work on Near and Native full time. “I had such a bad interview, and I’m so glad I did because it pushed me so far into doing my own thing. I was in tears in the parking lot. I was like, ‘What am I doing,’” Martin says. “It was just a big neon sign saying, ‘This door is getting slammed in your face, do not go in that direction again.’”

In Near and Native’s Westbrook studio, warm, woodsy scents fill the space and envelop you as you walk past a white wall displaying dozens of candles. The cavernous room opens to a row of tables, where candles are in different stages of production. Martin and her team of three full-time employees and two part-time workers prep the glass containers and wooden wicks, blend fragrances with coconut wax, fill the candles, and package them for distribution.

There’s a separate station for the company’s candle-refilling program, a service Martin has been offering since she started, to reduce the waste created by candles. Customers can pay to refill any vessel, including other company’s candles, for about half the price of a new candle. Some will even send in homemade pottery to be turned into candles. The company has done 7,000 candle refills in four years, including 3,300 refills last year alone.

Near and Native candles are now sold in more than 50 stores around the country, including at L.L.Bean and on the outdoor retailer’s website. Martin also collaborates with brands to create custom candles, ranging from national companies like Danner to local boutiques like Fitz and Bennett Home in Portland. She sometimes works with businesses to create scents as part of their brand identity. “Everybody’s getting off the internet and going back to real life, and scent is a really important part of making a place feel special, giving a sense of place when you’re walking into a store, a restaurant, a brewery,” Martin says. For Après, a hard seltzer and cider tasting room in Portland, she created a cedarwood and neroli blend. “When you walk in, that smell right away creates a pathway, and you’re like, ‘That’s the Après scent,’” Martin says.

Most of Near and Native’s scents are inspired by nature and Maine, and its top-selling candle is White Pine. “It’s very bright, woodsy, fresh, kind of like after it rains and you walk in the woods,” Martin says. While her favorite scent is Cedar and Amber, the one that evokes the strongest memories for Martin is Maine Maple. “I grew up in Indiana and we grew up tapping trees and making maple syrup, and for me that scent takes me back to being eight years old in my dad’s sugar shack, watching him boil down sap,” Martin says. “It’s certainly not a top seller, but I love it. I never want to get rid of it.”

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The post Maine’s Favorite Candle appeared first on The Maine Mag.

While plenty of big-name hotels offer serviceable rooms, sometimes you’re looking for more than clean sheets and a hot shower. Sometimes, you want a travel experience—to be surprised and seduced by your home-away. Time off is precious and should be savored, so next time you’re planning a long weekend, remember these visually enticing interiors. Some of the rooms are so good, you won’t even want to go out.

Blind Tiger

Located in Portland’s West End near the Portland Museum of Art and the Victoria Mansion, the Blind Tiger (owned by Massachusetts-based boutique chain Lark Hotels) aims to give guests the impression that they’re staying with a friend, the kind of person who is “always hosting low-key parties and connecting the most interesting people,” says Megan Kennedy, cofounder of design firm Elder and Ash and creative director at Lark. The building is a nineteenth-century Federal-style brick mansion that once, a century ago, housed a speakeasy in the basement. “The Blind Tiger has had many lives,” says Kennedy, who drew on the history of the neighborhood as well as the influence of the local maker community. While not all the art and furniture comes from New England shops, the team sourced quite a few one-of-a-kind pieces from Portland Flea for All, a beloved local thrift store. As a result, each guest room feels distinct. Some have leather woven headboards, others have black-painted turned wood. Some rooms have rattan armchairs, others feature soft weathered leather. To tie it all together, the design team brought in plaid blankets from Evangeline Linens for guests to use while sitting by the fire. To add another layer of local color, each room was named by a different Portland “host,” including local musician Spencer Albee and poet Gibson Fay-LeBlanc. Upon arrival, guests are given a letter from their room’s patron outlining a few things to love about Portland.

163 Danforth St., Portland | 207.879.8755 | blindtigerportland.com

York Beach Surf Club

Designer Chelsea Mortenson of Brass Tacks Studio in Chicago expresses awe at the idea of “a winter surfing culture, in Maine of all places.” And yet, this offbeat hobby gave Mortenson plenty of inspiration when it came to outfitting the guest rooms and bungalows at York Beach Surf Club, a resort located near Long Sands Beach. Set to open in early 2022, the property is owned by the Perkins family, who have lived and surfed in Maine for decades. “We found all these incredible over-saturated and kind of blown-out photographs from the 1960s. We had them restored, and we used those as the jumping-off point of the palette,” Mortenson explains. She had the images, which featured owner Taylor Perkins’s dad and his buddies with their boards, enlarged and framed to hang alongside macramé, potted plants, and pop art. Rather than the expected pine Adirondack chairs, Mortenson installed hammocks and swings outside for guests to kick back in. While this may sound a little kitschy, she kept the rest of the design sleek and understated, with lots of stainless steel, monochrome tiles, and white satin paint. The overall effect is “Scandi-nautical,” according to Mortenson. Gray-stained floor planks in the main areas mimic the stony shores of Maine, and touches of burnt orange add warmth and interest. “When you are at the York Beach Surf Club, it feels like an extension of the beach,” Mortenson says. “It’s not too ‘throwback,’ but wherever you look you’re reminded of the story of this resort.”

780 York St., York | 207.363.4037 | yorkbeachsurfclub.com

White Barn Inn

A few years ago, this famous inn (which comes recommended by the likes of Goop, Forbes, and Travel and Leisure) was purchased by the Auberge Resorts Collection, a group that owns luxury hotels around the world. With a new, globally minded ownership came a new, globally influenced look. Auberge brought in Jenny Wolf of Jenny Wolf Interiors in New York to update the classic Kennebunk destination (and their eponymous award-winning restaurant). The result is as preppy as ever, but with a more youthful spin. Think soft beige buffalo-check curtains, not cobalt-and-white gingham. There’s still plenty of beachy blue, but Wolf selected complicated, subdued robin’s-egg blue and smoky teal rather than the traditional delft blue for the walls and trim. Zebra skin rugs, taxidermy wall hangings, and fluffy white pillows clash playfully with black-painted Windsor chairs, giving the whole space a rather eclectic (yet still old-money) vibe.

37 Beach Ave., Kennebunk | 207.967.2321 | aubergeresorts.com/whitebarninn

Squire Tarbox Inn

Updated in 2018, rooms at the historic Squire Tarbox Inn toe the line between chicly minimalist and old-school austere. There’s something almost monastic about the Yankee decor, which relies heavily on quality solid-wood furniture and soft textiles to create a sense of under-stated ease. You may be surprised to learn that the new owner, Lisa Dalton, hails from Texas, but the items she’s sourced from down South feel quite at home in the white-walled rooms. Along with a collection of majolica pottery, Dalton has brought in vintage bowling pins and a chest covered in Texas cowhide to add texture to the space. “There are some whimsical things in there,” she says. “I wanted it to feel unfussy and outside-the-box.” The main building dates back to the 1700s (the nearby barn was built in the 1820s), and it shows; while there’s air-conditioning available and heat pumps to guard against the winter chill, Dalton opted to retain the dinged-up exposed beams and the wide, worn floorboards. This was the correct choice. There’s a lot of character and charm in the Squire Tarbox, especially if you’re willing to look closely. “We’re on Westport Island, a bit outside of town, but that’s part of the appeal,” says Dalton, who has been visiting nearby Wiscasset for years. “I really think it’s a hidden gem.”

1181 Main Rd., Westport | 207.315.5561 | squiretarboxinn.com

Seven Lakes Inn

For those who prefer fresh water to salt, the Seven Lakes Inn in Belgrade will come as a pleasant surprise. Rather than leaning into the camp look with brass bears and deer horns, the owners, mother-daughter duo Carolyn Walker and Jordan Shaw, decided to inject a little European flair into their slice of Maine. The striped linen bedding feels straight out of Provence, and “guests swoon over the finish of the plaster walls that I applied to the dining and sitting rooms,” Shaw says. “It creates a really cozy, soothing environment to reflect the cool and earthy tones of the surrounding trees and lakes just outside. The original grand staircase also anchors the center of the building in a very beautiful, classic way.” After restoring the 1843 Italianate building with help from their extended family, Walker and Shaw set to work decorating with antiques sourced from their travels at home and abroad. “Some of our go-tos include the Post Supply, Cabot Mill Antiques, Samuel Snider Antiques, and Marston House,” reveals Shaw. The overall effect is one of worn country glamor—perfect for a lakeside getaway.

168 Main St., Belgrade | 207.877.4412 | sevenlakesinn.com

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The post Five Stylish Inns to Book for Your Next Maine Getaway appeared first on The Maine Mag.

Friends often make the best collaborators. So, when Melanie and Pliny Reynolds, East End residents and business owners, saw that the compound around the Portland Observatory on Munjoy Hill was up for sale, they tapped their friendships to snag the property and transform the historic buildings.

The couple, who at the time needed a larger space for their growing family, fantasized about turning one of the buildings into a guesthouse and living in the other. They proposed the guesthouse idea to their long-time friends Whitney and Jon Lendzion, who were as intrigued by the location as they were and agreed that the time was ripe to bring a distinctive accommodation to the hill.

The four friends make an ideal quartet for starting a business: Whitney is an interior designer, Jon is a contractor, Pliny is an architectural designer, and Melanie has experience in branding and hospitality. “We all brought something separate to the table,” says Melanie. “And we have a lot of friends in the trades industries locally, so we knew we had all the key players who could help us put it together in a special way.”

First developed by local entrepreneur Captain Lemuel Moody in the early 1800s, the compound included a marine signal tower (now the Portland Observatory, the oldest tower of its type in the United States), a house, and a dance hall and bowling alley, where townspeople and shipping industry travelers alike gathered to carouse. Moody’s granddaughter Elizabeth lived in the house where the Reynoldses now reside, and at one point rented out rooms for overnight guests. “What’s really neat about it for me is that these two properties are joined again for the first time in a long time,” says Melanie. “Reconnecting them and creating this space for guests to enjoy in the same way that people did a hundred years ago, it’s kind of a rebirth, but modernized.”

The name Best Bower, which Jon came up with, has several meanings: it’s the forward anchor on a ship, the card that ranks above the others in a particular hand, and it’s also another word for arbor. The idea of a hidden, unassuming space especially resonated with the group, as the modern iteration of the property started with the courtyard garden, which had become overgrown from years of neglect. “A sloped side yard shouldered by both the Observatory and a mature oak tree provided a natural opportunity for an enclosed terraced garden with communal seating,” says Whitney, who worked on the design. Whitney also did the gardening and landscaping alongside Jon, while Cape Landscapes built the stone walls and laid the brickwork.

Inside, the Best Bower’s six rooms are bright with natural light but also notably private. Four of the rooms have exterior entrances off the courtyard, and the remaining two rooms, which are accessed from the street, have interior entrances on separate floors. “It was important to us to make guests feel like their room belongs to them,” says

Whitney. Much like an Airbnb rental, Best Bower, which opened on Memorial Day of this year, is for the most part a self-service place, complete with a shared kitchenette that includes a full-size refrigerator and a compact convection oven big enough to, say, heat up a premade lasagna from Rosemont Market and Bakery up the street. There are also add-on food packages that Melanie sources from local purveyors, such as a cheese and charcuterie board featuring picks from the Cheese Shop of Portland. “Once people are here they can reach out to me as much or as little as they want,” explains Melanie.

Because the team needed to fit six guest rooms into a relatively small footprint, unique rooms emerged. The room at the end of the courtyard, for example, has a particularly high ceiling, inspiring the team to add a coffered wooden design. Whitney’s brother, Wylie Wirth of Fine Furniture Solutions, used reclaimed white oak to create both the ceiling and a paneled sliding door for the room dubbed the Library.

The decor for the other rooms evolved in the same way, starting with architectural features and fanning out from there. Friends from the firm John Sparre helped to build wooden lofts for the next two rooms (Loft East and Loft West), which were narrow and tall and needed, in Whitney’s words, “large brushstrokes that were materials-driven.”

Both the last room on the courtyard (the Courtyard Queen) and the first room on the ground floor as entered from the street (the Congress Queen) have more standard volumes. “We had been stockpiling giant red oak logs from around southern Maine for the last 20 years,” says Whitney, “and we finally got to use them for built-in closets and dry bars.” Executed by Andrew Boshe of Green Tree Carpentry and Wylie Wirth, the red oak gave these rooms the punch they needed.

The sixth room, which is upstairs and off the street, has a sloped ceiling, creating the perfect opportunity for skylight views of the Observatory (in fact, three of the rooms have skylights). “The skylights frame the Observatory in a really unexpected way that you wouldn’t see anywhere else,” says Melanie. More red oak paneling, slab countertops, and quarter-sawn cabinetry by Joe Seremeth from WoodLab give the room, which is called the Crow’s Nest, a boat-like feel. “In each case, the rooms and their built details evolved in concert with the trades-person or craftsperson working on them,” says Whitney. “The Best Bower is just as much theirs as it is ours.”

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The post A New Portland Guesthouse Gives a Historic Building a Second Life appeared first on The Maine Mag.

Antonia and Stephen Anderson live in an old house on Munjoy Hill. It was built in the mid-1800s, as was much of the neighborhood, which was populated primarily by working-class and immigrant families. According to Greater Portland Landmarks, houses on the Hill were distinguished by being small and in the “local vernacular.” Inglorious at the time, these structures have weathered and aged spectacularly. From the beginning, the Andersons’ house had character, though it did need a little work. “When we moved in, the floors were covered in carpet. I’ve pulled that up so you can see the square nails,” reveals Antonia; she then painted them with a lightening wash. “You can see the wood coming through, but they’re also white.”

White, the former fashion designer explains, is her favorite color to work with. It creates a sense of expansiveness in a space and makes the most of the natural light coming in from the windows. This is very important to her, as is having a healthy array of plants in every room—save the bedroom. (They emit very low amounts of carbon dioxide during the night, but they also help clean the air in living spaces and provide lush, bright color.) She likes lots of wood and dislikes clutter, which can feel distracting and burdensome to the subconscious. Good lighting is “very important,” she explains. “Our environment has a bearing on who we are as people and how we feel on a daily basis. It’s so important that our homes support us to be the best we can be.”

Antonia and Stephen have always had an interest in promoting physical health—for 15 years they owned the Body Architect (a gym and fitness studio) in Portland’s East End—but Antonia has recently taken a new turn. The Italian-born world traveler has decided to return to her design roots (her work at Cole Haan is what brought her to Maine in the first place) and open an interior design business. “My hope is to have the career now that I’ve been waiting for,” she says. “It will be my third career, but I’ve been wanting to do this for 16 years. I put it on hold to run the business with my husband, but I’ve had an incredible yearning to do this.”

Although the global pandemic has been a time of great upheaval and pain, it’s also helped spur change. Like many of us, Antonia has been staying indoors far more than usual. She’s spent time reflecting on her space and its meaning. She’s clarified her vision—for both her house and her life. “I want to be in service to people,” she says. “I want to help them make their lives better. We did that through the Body Architect. But I just love design. I love to look at beautiful things and create beautiful things for others.” It is, to hear Antonia explain it, a shift in focus but not in overall intention. She wants to help others find the joy in their living spaces that she finds in hers. “Before, when I was working out of the house, I was sort of just passing through the rooms,” she says. “Now, being here all the time, it’s made me really enjoy and appreciate our home as a nurturing space.”

Light, plants, art, and warmth—these are the key elements that make a room feel supportive to Antonia. This formula appears throughout her home. In the living area, you’ll find big chunky textiles strewn over comfortable couches, a broad-leafed monstera soaking in the sun from street-level windows, and, above the couch, a large painting of a snowy landscape by the Maine artist John Hafford. “It’s almost all white, and it’s incredibly soothing and relaxing. The moment I look at it, my shoulders drop,” says Antonia. In the kitchen, the couple has hung a piece depicting Scarborough Beach by Thomas Connolly that Antonia bought in 1993. “It captures the summer by the beach, and it is wonderful to look at in the winter when we feel like summer is never going to get here.” Aside from a single piece by a Japanese artist (her work in the fashion industry required Antonia to travel extensively around Asia), all of the couple’s work is by local artists. “I think good art is just as important to a home as good rugs,” she says.

The plants, carpets, and paintings all keep the couple’s white rooms from feeling too stark, and allow the natural charm of the old house to shine through. “I’m Italian, and I’ve lived in a lot of places, and I think I’m very inspired by architecture,” she says. “I like clean environments, but I also like the color that comes from paintings, oils and acrylics, and the green of leaves. When you have white walls and art you like, it creates a wonderful, light, and airy environment.” However, she knows that each person requires something different from their space, as does each environment. The light changes, she says, when you live in the woods or by the beach. A positive space is one that makes the best of its light and appeals to its inhabitants’ unique tastes. “You don’t have to spend a lot of money to make your house better,” Antonia adds. “Sometimes, it’s just decluttering. But I want to help people live their best lives. That starts at home.”

The post Plants, Art, and Lots of Light at a Munjoy Hill Home appeared first on The Maine Mag.