See How This Designer Blends Southern Tradition and City Chic
Growing up in the tiny town of Americus, Georgia, Lynde Easterlin spent endless hours roaming the exquisitely appointed home of her neighbor, eccentric antiquarian and interior designer Furlow Gatewood. Exploring alongside Gatewood’s niece, “I marveled at his global treasures, and at how the traditional rooms felt warm and inviting. It all made a huge impact on me,” she recalls.
After college, Easterlin worked for Gatewood’s friend John Rosselli at his Manhattan shop, followed by stints with Christopher Maya and Charlotte Moss, the latter of whom gave her a key piece of advice: “She said, ‘Get out! You need to leave the office to find inspiration.’”
For the now Connecticut-based Easterlin, those field trips often yielded her most creative ideas. Now nine years into owning her eponymous firm, she continues the tradition by traveling to far-flung locales. On a recent excursion to India, she fell hard for Rajasthan’s mirrored tiles and intense colors. “My mind went wild imagining all the ways I could adapt what I had seen to my own work,” she says.
But another important influence shows up in many of her projects: the cosmopolitan chic of New York. After spending nearly 10 years in the city, Easterlin maintains a reverence for Southern tradition filtered through the lens of modernity. “I often use traditional sepia-tone wall panels by companies like Zuber that show historical reference to scenes from famous battles in France and America,” she says. “I then combine that with a modern light fixture or furniture designed by one of the late modern masters like Hans Wegner or Paul Frankl.”
The finishing touch? “I love Fine Paints of Europe full oil gloss,” she says. “Adding a gloss to a space makes it shine and gives it that next level of sophistication.”
This story originally appeared in the March 2018 issue of House Beautiful.
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