GOLDEN AGE

Designer Neal Beckstedt embraces the beauty and power of patina in the renovation of his Sag Harbor home

- MAYER RUS

THE KITCHEN IS CENTERED ON AN 18TH-CENTURY SWEDISH BAROQUE TABLE SET BENEATH EARLY-20TH-CENTURY PENDANT LIGHTS FROM CITYFOUNDRY. AN AGA STOVE IS BACKED BY A FIELD OF RECLAIMED CEMENT TILES FROM EXQUISITE SURFACES. SINK FITTINGS BY CATCHPOLE & RYE.

In The Seven Lamps of Architecture, the eminent 19th-century polymath John Ruskin observed, “The greatest glory of a building is not in its stones, nor in its gold. Its glory is in its Age, and in that deep sense of voicefulness, of stern watching, of mysterious sympathy...which we feel in walls that have long been washed by passing waves of humanity.” Ruskin, of course, was not referring to anything as pedestrian as a modest worker’s cottage in an erstwhile whaling and shipping port—he was ruminating on ancient temples, Renaissance cathedrals, and fabulous European palaces. But his reverence for the beauty of patina and memory and the soulfulness of timeworn buildings is apt here nevertheless.