Child 's Play

A high-low mix of finishes comes together to form a glamorous yet family-friendly nest in a Brooklyn brownstone

- Jane Keltner De Valle

Do we have the garlic? The anchovy paste? What about the Dijon mustard?’ bellows a voice from the kitchen. A chorus of ‘Check! Check! Check!’ echoes back. It’s 4 pm on a Tuesday, and cooking class is underway for four-year-old Gracie Durrett and a half dozen of her friends. The five-meter-long Calacatta gold kitchen island is prepped with all the ingredients for a Caesar salad, and the junior chefs are just about to add the Worcestershire sauce when Sylvana Ward Durrett – matriarch of the house and cofounder of US-based children’s e-commerce boutique Maisonette – sweeps down the stairs and motions for me to join her one flight up on the parlor floor. ‘It’s mayhem down there,’ she says, leading me into the decidedly more grown-up living room, where she sinks into a mustard-velvet sofa perched atop a graphic striped rug.

Gracie and my son are schoolmates, so the scene of a gaggle of kids in her roost – whether for a birthday party or a Maisonette photoshoot (the home serves as a recurring backdrop for the site’s campaigns) – is in fact a familiar one. The first time I laid eyes on the residence was through a picture my babysitter sent me of my son, Gracie and another girl donning swimsuits in the master bath’s freestanding tub for one such shoot. Sylvana claims she hadn’t even hatched the business idea when they started designing the home, but she admits, ‘it works out well.’