Sneak peek: Palm Beach designer makes a return visit to upcoming Kips Bay show house

It’s an old question: Is it nature or nurture that forms who we are? In the case of seasonal Palm Beach resident and interior designer Jonathan Savage, both seem to play a part.

“My parents were in real estate, so I was always around it,” he says, about growing up in Nashville, Tennessee, where his interior design business is headquartered.

“To flex my creative muscles, since interior decorating was my passion, I always did it, whether I was dragging furniture across my parents’ hardwood floors or painting my bedroom Ninja Turtle green. My parents embraced my creativity and let me be.”

Savage will be among nearly two dozen design professionals whose work will be featured at the latest Palm Beach County edition of the Kips Bay Decorator Show House, which opens to the public for about a month of tours on Feb. 23 at a lakefront house in West Palm Beach. Admission to the preview day on Feb. 22 is by special ticket only.

The seventh annual show house will raise funds for the Boys & Girls Clubs of Palm Beach County and the Kips Bay Boys & Girls Club in New York City.

Savage studied at Tennessee’s O’More College of Design in Franklin before heading to New York to work in Manhattan.

He learned early on that success in the interior design field is often about the relationships forged with other designers.

“My mentor, Albert Hadley, connected me with David Kleinberg before I started my own company in 2010,” he says, referring to Savage Interior Design.

He describes his signature style as classic with a modern edge.

“I try to follow classical interior design standards, but I like modern, clean furnishings.”

Over his career, he’s taken part in multiple show houses, including the 2017 edition of the Kips Bay fundraiser in New York and the 2020 Palm Beach version.

For this year’s show house, he was assigned the decoration of the contemporary-style home’s study.

“Show houses are an opportunity for people to see my work, and I seem to always get work from them. Also, they are a good way to give back to charities,” he says.

Savage is sharing vice-chairman duties for the upcoming show house with designer Billy Ceglia.

A longtime visitor to Palm Beach, Savage decided to buy a vacation home and open an office on the island after decorating the pool pavilion at the 2020 edition of the show house, which took place at an estate in West Palm Beach.

“After the show house, we ended up with some great projects on the island and in West Palm Beach, so it made sense to invest here,” Savage says. “We work across the country, with Nashville as my home base and Palm Beach as a secondary base. I’ve come full circle,” he says. “Currently, we are working on a fun project here with Michael Perry,” the principal of MP Design & Architecture in Palm Beach.

Savage shares a condominium on Ibis Isle with his partner, health care executive Bradley Wensel.

The participants in this year’s show will design rooms and rework outdoor paces at the five-bedroom, 8,589-square-foot home at 230 Miramar Way.

For his study, Savage envisioned a client who enjoys living in Florida and being outdoors but also enjoys having a space to be creative — “to write, to sketch, to curl up and read a book. He or she has traveled and is open to collecting beautiful art and showcasing it in interesting ways,” he says.

A Zimmer + Rohde fabric was his starting point. “I was inspired by maritime flags that I’ve seen at the Palm Beach Yacht Club. The complementary graphic pattern in the textured linen drapery fabric is very maritime. It adds texture and color. We also repeated the pattern in the upholstery of the armchair,” he says.

From there, Savage chose the room’s predominant color, which influenced his design choices for the rest of the room.

“I wrapped the walls and trimmed the bookcases and fluting in Benjamin Moore’s Mount Saint Anne blue with a gray undertone. It’s a versatile color. The room is just swathed in blues, and it’s kind of magic.”

He commissioned local artist William Finlayson to paint four color-block oils to be displayed on Casa Metier fluted wall panels.

To add a sense of nature — specifically of the sea — he chose lamps for both sides of the sofa by Stephen Antonson, a Manhattan plaster artist. “They sort of remind me of coral or barnacles,” he says.

Other striking shapes include a pyramidal side table made of rock-crystal; and a 48-inch round wicker hanging light fixture from Currey & Co., which Savage says reminds him of a globe.

“I wanted a beautiful, classic space with clean modern lines, and having (been assigned) the study, I knew I wanted a beautiful desk, so I commissioned Keith Fritz Fine Furniture to make one for us. It’s a black-cerused oak, built to go under the double window with a nice garden view.”

The built-in, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves will feature volumes of books and objets d’art.

“I just spent two weeks in Europe sourcing objects at the Paris flea market and in London. I found beautiful Spanish ginger jars — a crimson red — that are anchors of the bookshelves. And I found some plaster sculptures in Belgium,” he says. “I also found some Italian marble sculptures from Milan.”

A prototype of his first book, "The Savage Style," to be published by Gibbs Smith and launched in September, also will be on display.

“It was 14 years in the making,” he says.

A design tenet mentioned in the book, he adds, can be applied to his show house room. “Always make sure when you are designing a space that you add something of (exceptional) interest,” he says.

In the study, that role will be filled by the taupe, lacquered wall covering by Phillip Jeffries.

And Savage offers another key piece of advice. “Never forget the ceiling — it’s the fifth wall.”

Even though his study was designed to be a place of creativity and learning, there’s also a spot to kick back. The room has a bar, a picture-perfect place to “have a seat and have a beverage,” Savage says.

IF YOU GO

The Kips Bay Decorator Show House Palm Beach will open to the general public Feb. 23 and run through March 17, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Mon.-Sat., at 230 Miramar Way, West Palm Beach. General admission is $40 with advance ticket purchase and $60 at the door if available. Special tickets for a Feb. 22 opening day preview, noon- 8 p.m., start at $400. For details and tickets, visit: KipsBayDecoratorShowhouse.org.*

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To see rooms designed by Jonathan Savage of SAVAGE Interior Design, click on the photo gallery at the top of this page.

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For more than 20 years, Christine Davis has written about interior design and real estate for the Palm Beach Daily News.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Daily News: Palm Beach designer creates an urbane study for Kips Bay show house