The expected country-cute rooster printed on a dishtowel, a fat cartoon cat quilted on a potholder — these are not the animals that live in Alice and John Walker’s kitchen. When the couple decided to renovate this central room in their house in Flat Rock, they made plenty of room for their savvily curated collection of folk-art animals, gathered partly from Oliver’s Folk Art (now closed) in Hendersonville, with important pieces from Minnie Adkins, a well-known self-taught artist from Kentucky.
A wooden egret with excellent posture stands sentinel in the breakfast nook, and a small sculpted black bear that resembles a preshistoric anteater checks the breakfast table for crumbs. Near the sink, a whittled prowling dog competes with a stainless-steel KitchenAid mixer for sleekness. The window valance in this corner is an outsized, abstract paisley print that suggests cavorting, heiroglyphic beetles. Opposite the center island, on a recessed granite countertop, a bright, feisty, stiff-tailed fox adds sly humor to the scheme.
Husband John is an avid chef, and worked closely with Ashley Smith — designer, project manager, and owner of Benson & Babb Interiors. “John is the cook of the pair,” confirms Smith, “so he had a good bit to say in what went into the layout. He has leanings to the contemporary, and she has roots more in an updated cottage feel … so I did my best to accommodate both.”
“John wanted a gas stove,” elaborates Alice, “and I wanted new cupboards. So we asked Ashley to plan it.”
Their smooth mediator was happy to oblige, and Alice adds, “we are so pleased with the results.”
But Smith does admit that the kitchen “needed a good bit of updating.” He answered the challenge with a palette of vibrant black and red against a creamy-neutral backdrop of walls and floor (painted in Sherwin-Williams’ “Compatible Cream”). The color scheme “fits with the rest of the house,” Alice explains — but also stands impressively on its own.
Pendant lighting by Visual Comfort (sourced through Benson & Babb) illuminates the painted-black Mission-style cupboards with paneled glass insets, brilliantly complemented by a bright white, subway-tile sink backsplash in a herringbone design. The island is a colonial-look, classic raised-panel cherry with a rustic finish. Meanwhile, the couple’s own rugs, the table covering, red frames on the 2-D artwork, flowers in the chair pillows, and even kitchen utensils fire up the crimson accents.
Smith calls the floors (by Florida Tile) a “grand mix” of various sizes of porcelain in a cobblestone layout. And indeed, this bold stretch of tile, uniting the kitchen proper with the adjacent nook, anchors the space with much dignity.
But it’s a carved heron on wing, culled from a folk-art show in Florida, who somehow has the final say. Streamlined and swift, paralleled above the wide kitchen entryway, the creature’s placement is a stroke of whimsical genius that helps all the rich colors and cabinetry take flight.