The Blue & White Damask Living Room

This is the room I would keep if I could only keep one. It begins with a pair of blue-and-white damask club chairs — rolled arms, turned mahogany legs, a line of brass nailheads down the side — pulled up to face a cream sofa across a bleached oak table, so the conversation happens in the middle of the room instead of at the television. The pattern does all the talking, which means everything else gets to be quiet: an ivory tufted rug underfoot, linen pillows in three shades of harbor blue, white hydrangeas cut short in a porcelain jar. Then the blue objects go in, one at a time. A chinoiserie porcelain lamp with an ivory bell shade on the sea-foam Oxford console. Its little sister, the sea-foam end table, beside a chair with a book already open on it. An eighteen-inch ginger jar on the floor by the window because it is too pretty for a shelf. A hand-blown ribbed glass bowl on a brass foot, holding nothing at all. A navy anchor shelf on the far wall, hung with rope, with one shell and one small blue jar on it. Teal tumblers stay out on the tray, because in a house near the water somebody is always coming in thirsty. And the dog gets her own knit ruffle blanket with her name on it, folded on the end of the sofa, because she lives here too.