J Banks Design. - Southern Coastal Living

Southern Coastal Living

Stylish Lowcountry Homes by J Banks Design

Joni Vanderslice
with Judith Nasatir

Photographs by Andrew and Gemma Ingalls

Southern Coastal Living

Stylish Lowcountry Homes by J Banks Design

Digital Edition 1.0

Text 2016 Joni Vanderslice

Photographs by Andrew and Gemma Ingalls, except as indicated.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except brief portions quoted for purpose of review.

Gibbs Smith

P.O. Box 667

Layton, Utah 84041

Orders: 1.800.835.4993

www.gibbs-smith.com

ISBN: 978-1-4236-4442-2

To Rick, Sarah, and Grace

God has given us a life full of adventure! I love and thrive on your passion for people and for sharing all things good.

E very person who has a story to tell wants to share it. Perhaps that is, at least in part, the seed of the idea of southern hospitality. Hospitality is about making people who arrive somewhere other than home feel at home: that theyre in capable hands, they can relax, their needs will be met, they can be themselves as they want to be whether they are inside or in nature. That is a deep emotional connection. It is what I call a sense of place. It is what design, at its best, when its right, creates.

In the South, we have a tradition of wanting our interiors to express who we areand where we are. In our primary residences, we tend to show our life histories. For our second homes, we may often craft a different personality. Because were southern, and because collecting seems to be a part of the DNA of the South, we do much of this through the accumulation of objects, artwork, and countless photographs of family and friends.

Good taste is not an abstract ideal for me, but a tangible concept personal to each client. I want to capture each of my clients personal vision with the same passion as if it were my own. To do so, I ask my clients how they live; how they utilize space; if they like to entertain; to show me images of what they like; and even more telling, images of what they dont like. After I have a true sense of the clients lifestyle, I can bring in color palettes that reflect their natural preferences, texture and furnishings that reflect their personalities, and unique art or accessories that are personal to them.

I love that the houses my designers and I work in today are made for the way we live today; yet they almost always carry forward traces, though very faint ones, of the traditions and vernaculars of our historic regional building and decorating styles. On Hilton Head Island, where southern coastal style is dominant, we use relaxed rather than formal references to signal the design heritage of the wider region. To express the spirit of an old house in a newly built one, we might use shifting rooflines and different building materials to suggest that additions were made to the main house over the years. If we use columns inside a home as opposed to outside, they will have simple forms and understated capitals with little ornament. There will be a proper entry, gracious porches and verandas for catching the breeze, a back hall mudroom for practicality, shutters and panels, shades and screens, and so on. All of these features belong to the tradition of the southern house. Today we use them still, but in the casual forms that suit life as we live it here and now. If a house is meant to be unpretentious and cottage-like in feeling, as so many houses in coastal resort areas such as Hilton Head are, shake and board and batten serve the purposeand feel quintessentially coastal.

I am a great believer in the role that interior design plays in creating a home that exudes hospitality. For me, this means an aesthetic of luxury without pretensethe comfortable sophistication that is the essence of southern coastal style.

I think I have always known that there was power in design and interiors. I grew up in High Point, North Carolina, the capital of Americas furniture industry. As early as 4th grade, I remember saying I wanted to be an interior designer. Throughout my childhood, I was always trying to do something to my room and to the house. All my extracurricular projects were about designing rooms and furniture. I dont know where my love of interior design came from, because no one in my family was interested or involved in it. My father was entrepreneur in auto racing and airplanes and heavy equipment. My mother was an accountant. But I never wavered through high school, and I received my bachelors degree in interior design from East Carolina University.

Putting down roots on Hilton Head was never the plan. I came here with a group of girls just after graduation to spend the summer. Very quickly, through a friend of a friend, I met Charles Fraser, the pioneering developer and a mastermind of the use of protective deeds and covenants, who planned Hilton Head and so many other ecologically friendly southern coastal communities, and his wife, Mary. When Mary found out that I had an interior design degree, she asked if I would come work with them, as they were renovating the Sea Pines properties then and she needed someone to liaise with the designers and also to collaborate with her on those she was redoing herself and, if all went well, perhaps do some of them myself.

Working for the Frasers that summer was a tremendous experience. In retrospect, it had a profound impact on my life. Charles would pull me up into his office for planning meetings for other developments, which gave me an incredible opportunity to learn about building firsthand. One of my jobs was to organize their photo library. They traveled frequently and had amassed a really rich archive of design-related imagesbicycle stands, lampposts, bridges, gates, you name itfrom their trips all over Europe and elsewhere. The daily effect of living on Hilton Head, which he developed so brilliantly while preserving both the landscape and the wildlife, influenced my own passion for the environment. It certainly gave me the impetus years later for building the Lowcountrys first LEED-certified building, which houses my firm.

Toward the end of that first summer on Hilton Head, Mary, who thought I dressed well, asked if I would put together a wardrobe for their elder daughter, who was off to boarding school. I did, and she loved it. So did Mary, who then asked me to do the same for their other daughter, and then for herself. Through Marys recommendation, I ended up with a clientele and so took a career detour into the fashion industry.

In those days, Savannah had a wonderful family-owned department store called Fines. Mr. Fine had the areas most up-to-date sportswear department, so I would shop there and bring the clothes back to Hilton Head for my clients. Eventually, he asked me to work for him, promising to take me under his wing and teach me to buy in New York. He did. At that time, especially in the South, most women and young women built their wardrobes on dresses or country separates from Pendleton and the like. But the industry was rapidly shifting to separatessportswearand Mr. Fine needed someone who knew how to put separates together for his in-store fashion shows, store windows, and young womens department. I was just a year out of college, and it was an incredible opportunity. The job at Fines led to another job at a very high-end clothing store on Hilton Head that was launching a new womens and childrens boutique; that job led to one at another high-end clothing store, as buyer and manager. I knew, though, that fashion wasnt where I wanted my career to be. Not long after, I was offered a position in an interior design firm, where I soon became its design manager.