Text by Vicki L. Ingham
“No matter where I work, I’m influenced by what’s out the window,” Jack Fhillips says. In Manhattan his palette is gray and white; in Bermuda it’s sand, sea glass, and pinks. For Black Squirrel Farm, his 123-year-old home in upstate New York, he looked out the windows at the “gorgeous greens of pines and evergreens” and brought those hues indoors. “My attitude is, when you’re surrounded by nature that way, you need to make it flow inside,” he says.
Because the house has so many big, double-hung windows, the interiors receive lots of light, allowing Jack to use an intense dark green in the living room and dining room. For the rest of the house he collected dozens of green paint samples from all the area paint stores and laid them out to see which ones appealed to him the most. The resulting choices range from pistachio to sage to mint and bottle-green.
In the living room, the dark walls contrast dramatically with the white draperies, rug, upholstery, and accessories, creating a formal English-country look.
