TUDOR HOMES ARE AS FAMOUSLY DARK AND MOODY AS the late-medieval British epoch in which the architecture was born—but that’s just the way the owner of this Montclair, New Jersey, abode likes it. “He’s an old-school guy, so we came up with a men’s club aesthetic,” says his designer, Birgitte Pearce, who is originally from Denmark. “A timeless kitchen doesn’t have to be white!”
The client has a basement workshop “that’s his palace,” Pearce says, and one goal was to bring back the basement stairs. The new stairwell’s line of walnut dowels with brass standoffs ended up as muse for the entire remodeling project. Now, the living metal supplies its burnished charms everywhere, from the drawer pulls to the range hood. Carrying these tones throughout the house allowed the designer…