The Garden Room

The Garden Room, also known as the Green Room, is one of the most iconic rooms of Winfield House. The work by decorator William Haines in the Garden Room for Ambassador and Mrs. Annenberg, has been the most extensive stylistic refurbishment to date. The Garden Room begins with the continuous oak parquet de Versailles flooring covered by a large carpet featuring bamboo and butterflies, an original design by Haines. The European furnishings [there are also oriental furnishings] in the Garden Room vary in style from French Rococo to Queen Anne Revival. Oriental influences can be observed in the various lacquered tables, lacquered chests, and porcelain lamps found throughout the room. Textiles are of a variety of materials, including silk and brocade in shades of pink and green. The walls begin with a simple baseboard moulding in a waxed pine that match the rest of the millwork in the room. The walls are decorated with a hand-painted 18-century Chinese wallpaper, which Haines purchased from a room in Towny Hall, Ireland, which dates to England’s Georgian period. The color of the wallpaper is a jade green and depicts a landscape enriched with slender flowering trees of cherries, almonds, viburnums, and peonies. Crowther, a well-known English dealer for garden ornamentation and architectural features, supplied the mantelpiece, which perfectly coordinates with the intricately-carved broken pediments in waxed pine. Old pine was used in the construction of the piece in order to give the impression of natural patina as if the mantelpiece dated to the 18th-century. The broken pediments over the doors in the Garden Room were modeled after pediments in the North Hall at Claydon House in Buckinghamshire, England but were simplified by eliminating elaborate Rococo forms within the pediment. The original pediments at Claydon House are considered to be excellent examples of exuberant English Rococo designs, dating to the 1750s or Middle Georgian period. The windows are framed with architraves milled in pine and waxed. Haines also designed the eight pelmet boards over the window treatments of the Garden Room to keep the drapes within the window reveals in order to best showcase the Chinese wallpaper. A subtle cornice, in the same shade of green to match the wallpaper, is separated from the ceiling by a thick cove moulding detail also painted to match the wallpaper. Two crystal chandeliers hang gracefully from the ceiling of the Garden Room.