The Natural

Charles Baker’s Beacon Hill apartment demonstrates that, regardless of provenance or period, good design looks great and functions beautifully. His simple New England rooms—the children’s quarters in the original building, a single-family house constructed in 1849—are furnished with well-made pieces of various vintages. Comfortable, functional furniture keeps company with a range of old, new, handmade and production fabrics.

Woven throughout is a vast and fascinating array of collected objects. The living room, for instance, includes elements variously Italian, French, American Eastlake, Moroccan, Chinese, from the atelier of Billy Baldwin, from yard sales and from Ikea. In Baker’s home they all live together in harmony, looking composed, not cluttered. “The word eclectic is overused,” Baker says with a smile. “But this really is.”

Baker, who studied architectural history at the University of Virginia, works in design showrooms and is an independent interior designer. His clients come to him through friends who admire the deft, sure way he decorates a home, whether in Los Angeles, Palm Springs, London or Boston. By his own reckoning, he has lived in five apartments, one house and a cottage during the past ten years alone. “I moved from California to Boston in July of 2008,” he explains. “I have moved so frequently that I have become very expert at this setting up of a home. The apartment was done six weeks after I moved in.”

INTERIOR DESIGN
Charles Baker
PRODUCED BY
Kyle Hoepner