The Maine House | Kathleen Hackett
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Intro: Welcome to the one and only interior design book podcast. Decorating by the Book hosted by Suzy Chase from her dining room table in New York City. Join Suzy for conversations about the latest and greatest interior design books with the authors who wrote them.
Kathleen Hackett: My name is Kathleen Hackett and I am a co-author along with Maura McEvoy and Basha Burwell of The Maine House published by Vendome Press.
Suzy Chase: Before diving into this book, I'd like to thank my new sponsor Bloomist. Bloomist creates and curates simple, sustainable products that inspire you to design a calm, natural refuge at home. I'm excited to announce they've just introduced new tabletop and kitchen collection that's truly stunning. Visit bloomist.com and use the code DECORATING20 to get 20% off your first purchase or click the link in the show notes. Now on with the show.
Suzy Chase: So, you wrote this lovely book along with Maura McEvoy and Basha Burwell. For four years and over 3,000 miles, Maura and Basha traveled throughout Maine. Can you talk a little bit about that collaboration?
Kathleen Hackett: The three of us came together largely as the results of our passion for this place that we've each experienced in a somewhat distinct way. And in the way that creative people do, we found each other when the right project came along. I've known Maura for 25 years, mainly through her work as a photographer and in the early years as a stylist. And then, that's when I was an editor of lifestyle books.
Kathleen Hackett: Maura and Basha have been working together for years as photographer and art director respectively for Garnet Hill, the HomeGoods company based in New Hampshire. Basha is a Maine native and Maura has spent every summer of her life on the vast, amazing beaches of Southern Maine. And one day at work, they realized that they had both spent summers in Maine cottages built in the same year of 1911. So, they really connected over this.
Kathleen Hackett: But it was when she had just finished a shoot and she was driving down the California Freeway that Maura had the light bulb moment. She's been doing all these freelance jobs for years, and then she asked herself, why wasn't she photographing the place that she loved more than anywhere in the world? Especially because she was watching the Maine that she knew as a child vanish, the wrecking ball was creeping its way up the coast. And she decided it was time to create a visual record of vanishing Maine. And she thought Basha would make an excellent collaborator.
Kathleen Hackett: She'd been a stylist for L.L.Bean, and part of her job was to find locations all over the state. Basha's also an excellent, gentle trespasser, we like to call her, she'll tiptoe around people's properties to get a good look, especially in the off season. So, that's how they came together.
Kathleen Hackett: And then Maura called me early on knowing that I had made many books before and one that actually featured her home, I authored a book called Brooklyn Interiors and we photographed Maura's DUMBO loft. She asked me if I'd be interested at some point in writing the stories to illuminate the photographs. And of course I said yes immediately.
Kathleen Hackett: But it does have to be said, when you ask about collaboration, we are three women working in the margins of our established careers. We were juggling work and family and all that comes with that. And we made time to take on this passion project that then became a commercial success. I think we're all flabbergasted by that. And really it doesn't get any better than that.
Suzy Chase: Oh my gosh. It has been a commercial success. How many times has this book sold out?
Kathleen Hackett: Oh my gosh. Well, the first printing sold out in about six weeks.
Suzy Chase: Wow.
Kathleen Hackett: And then, given the situation with supply chains, the second printing just appeared in stores last week. But we are set for a third and fourth printing. By publisher metrics and standard, the book has been a great success.
Suzy Chase: You are a writer, editor and producer with a flair for the culinary arts and interior design, just like me. And what you love most about the writing process is documenting the way people live and what they choose to surround themselves with. So, how is it going back to document Maine?
Kathleen Hackett: I grew up in the only land-blocked New England state, which is Vermont, which is why Maine proved so alluring to me as a kid. Vermont has its glorious mountains and lakes and meadows and woods and farms, but there was nothing like those summers of my childhood visiting Ogunquit, that was in the '70s, when there were barely any people on the beach, we would just swim all day long in that freezing cold water and go eat clams and walk down the beach to get fudge.
Kathleen Hackett: But it wasn't until one of my sisters moved to the mid coast more than 30 years ago that I put down my own roots there. And she loves to tell the story of how I, for years, when I was working in New York, I would drive eight hours to and from the mid coast every weekend in the summer, that's how intense that gravitational pull was for that place.
Suzy Chase: Every weekend?
Kathleen Hackett: Every week... We had publishing hours, remember publishing hours? You would get out at 1:00 and I would do that drive in my old Volvo station wagon and not think a thing of it. That's how much in love I was with that place and needed a change of scene from New York. I was working for Martha Stewart at the time, and that was a very intense job.
Suzy Chase: So, one part of this project that was really poignant for you was being able to write about E. B. White's shingled cabin. Would you please describe this magical cabin?
Kathleen Hackett: Oh my gosh. So synonymous with my childhood was that book that, when I got married, my mother gave me a special copy, which was her way of telegraphing that she really saw me when I was a kid. She's a New Englander-
Suzy Chase: Stiff upper lip.
Kathleen Hackett: The economy of words. Yeah, wonderful person. But it was so poignant to me, I have to say. So, in writing about that 150 square foot space, I had the pleasure of speaking to Mary Gallant, one of the loveliest people on the planet, who was the former owner of the E. B. White House.
Kathleen Hackett: She and her husband really became stewards of the place. They opened it up to school children, tourists would stop unannounced and Mary was always happy to share a piece of that mythical Down East place. I wonder what it would've been like to write about that tiny room that was so sparsely furnished if I hadn't been such a crazed E. B. White fan.
Suzy Chase: Wait, how many times did you check out Charlotte's Web?
Kathleen Hackett: Oh my God, its countless. I think I just settled on 16, because... But I just had that book in my life for so long. If I focused on it as an interior story, there might not have been much to talk about. But when I thought about it, his daily routine, the walk he took along the path that was marked by the split rail fence, walking beside Harry Allen, cradling the underwood typewriter, how he must have walked through the door every day, probably opening that picture window, using that pulley system with the dingy anchor tied to the end, that traced its way from the sash over the rafters and across the room and then securing it on a cleat. Does it get any better than that?
Kathleen Hackett: Just that simple utilitarian window with the anchor on the end totally useful, but so beautiful at the same time, all of it was just hammered together. He had a Parson style table, but it only had two legs because the other end was attached to the wall and a very simple bench that had a single blue pillow that he probably used to support his back. And then he sat there in the corner flanked by two windows, but not facing either because that view of the gorgeous scene might have been a tiny bit distracting. There's no electricity, there's a tiny wood stove for heat.
Kathleen Hackett: The only thing pinned to the wall was a list of the news department heads at The New Yorker, which was evidence of his sense of humor. I just loved some of the most enduring American literature was produced in the most humble, but richly spirited place.
Suzy Chase: Well, that kind of goes to show us that at first glance you might think this book is about interior design, but it's a lot more than that. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Kathleen Hackett: It is indeed a lot more than that. It's really a plea to preserve a living history in a place that's really in danger of losing the very things that people fall in the love with it for it's a visual call to recognize and take responsibility for these spaces. So many of them that have absorbed the voices, the joys, the sorrows of generations of families, and to really recognize these places as special gifts. Hopefully the message is clear that when the last cottage is crumbled and the family farmhouse is flattened, there goes the unrenewable character in the charm. That's uniquely named.
Suzy Chase: You wrote in the book about the kind of visual wealth that money just can't buy. And I think that's exemplified in the chapter, entitled a carriage house. It's all about David Hopkins and David Wilson's 200 year old building on Hopkins Wharf named for a great-grandfather who arrived on the island in the late 18 hundreds. Can you please tell the story of the hatch?
Kathleen Hackett: Oh, the hatch. The minute David started talking about the hatch I had my lead for their story. I love the story of the hatch. So their home is a repurposed carriage house. And so obviously the original purpose of the hatch was to dispose of horse dunk, but David found another use for it. When he started living there 40 years ago, he has the dining table over it.
Kathleen Hackett: So the hatch was kind of at your feet, his nieces and nephews would throw table scraps through the hatch and jig for squid and David I loved watching him say this because his eyes sort of rose to heaven. And he said, "Oh, the place would be filled with squealed of delight." He just loved that. And really who wouldn't, a direct route to the sea, right under your feet. Sadly in the late nineties, there was a storm surge on north Haven and or in Penobscot bay and the trap door burst open.
Kathleen Hackett: And as the water receded, it took a lot of their stuff. Namely, a lot of their China, David was a merchandiser at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for many years. Most notably the storm stole this reproduction asparagus vase that he really loved. It was a piece that he had commissioned to be made for the gift shop at the met. So that was the end of the hatch. But years later, the vase was unearthed from the clam flats by a little child playing under the house. And it was aged to perfection by mother nature and it on a shelf in their kitchen now.
Suzy Chase: Oh, I love that.
Kathleen Hackett: Yeah.
Suzy Chase: David wrote, "I'd rather live with layers of evidence of what has come before than in something cleaned and restored." I think that's my favorite line in the whole book.
Kathleen Hackett: That's our siren call is essentially to implore people, to reuse, reduce, recycle. Let's maybe stay away from Ikea, for example, because the minute you see a piece from Ikea, you think, you know that it's going to eventually wind up in a landfill. When we were furnishing Red Cottage, my husband and I, which appears in the book, there wasn't a single item in it that was new, not one. And that's because Maine's treasure trove of previously loved furniture and lighting.
Kathleen Hackett: There are antique shops and flea markets, and junk shops and yard sales all summer long. And these things are generally better quality. They'll last, a lot longer. They've been imbued with history, and time, and stories. So David said it best, and it's a plea here to make your first stop, the antique store or the flea market.
Kathleen Hackett: And I hope that as people look through the pages of this book, that point is driven home. That instantly "decorated house is never really the one that has the soul that you're so attracted to." It would be good to study these pictures and really step back and think about why they are so appealing.
Suzy Chase: It's funny, because I come from a really old American family and my parents divorced in the seventies and my dad remarried this woman from Texas with this thick accent. And she was all about pastel and brand new furniture while our house was all family heirlooms. And one day she said, "Suzy likes only old stuff."
Kathleen Hackett: You need to change that narrative, right? Hopefully that's what we're doing here.
Suzy Chase: Yes. Old stuff is the best.
Kathleen Hackett: Old stuff is the best.
Suzy Chase: So I've lived in the West Village neighborhood of Greenwich Village in New York City for over 20 years. And one of the reasons I live here is for the type of person that's drawn to the village, I adore the mix of intellectuals, artists, writers, and activists. And it really makes for a vibrant neighborhood. Does Maine attract a certain type of personality?
Kathleen Hackett: Maine is really a glorious mix of all of those things that you just described. Artists have been coming to Maine for decades. Alex Kaz says he comes for the culture and the light Blue Mill and Brooklin in particular are teeming with writers, E.B White, of course, and Catherine White and Roger Angell and who still spends his summers there at age 100, Peter Barons who happens to be Basha's husband, also a phenomenal novelist. Jonathan Letham, John Hodgeman, Ayelet Waldman they're all up there.
Kathleen Hackett: And then of course elsewhere in the state, Kate Christensen, Lily King and of course Steven King and then Richard Russo. I mean the list goes on and on the place is just packed with all kinds of creative, tight. I love what Jordana Monk Martin said she revitalized Victorian house that was completely falling into the ground. And then she painted it black says that Maine appeals to your creative side, "Your wilder side, your frontier side, it makes you want to homestead and it makes you want to be off the grid."
Suzy Chase: What are a few ways we can bring classic Maine style into our home?
Kathleen Hackett: First thing we laugh about this a lot is you have to have a tilted lamp shade.
Suzy Chase: Now how come?
Kathleen Hackett: Well because why replace a perfectly good lamp shade? I think that's the feeling, but in so many cottages and camps that we feature, there is always a tilted lamp shade and I can't help, but think it's either it's always been like that. And there's a real reticent to change anything in some of these more generational places, but also there's the Yankee thrift like it works so that's great. You know, when people ask me this question, the easy thing to go to is clapboard shingles, painted furniture, painted floors. So I had to dig deeper and the tilted lamp shade was certainly one of the things, but also Maine houses are not decorated houses.
Kathleen Hackett: They are not done by decorators. They don't have a traditional decorated look. They are done by accumulation wherein you accumulate pieces over a lifetime. And that's really the way to achieve that soul, that is so attractive. And every single one of these houses does that. And then no built in kitchens, Sharon and Paul Mackey’s kitchen is really the poster child for this. They have baskets hanging from the ceiling. They have a shopkeeper's table for a chopping block, linen beautiful linen dish towels stand in for the cabinet doors. They have an old English cabinet for holding their pots and pans and dishes. There's nothing built in about it really.
Kathleen Hackett: And then I would say nature, you'll find that it's impossible not to go into the woods are down to the beach or along the shore and pick up beautiful shells and driftwood, leaves, branches, you name it and bring them inside. And everyone has some version of that in their house.
Suzy Chase: Where can we find you on the web and social media?
Kathleen Hackett: You can find us on Instagram @themainhouse_thebook and also @vendomepress.com. And of course, wherever books are sold, we'd love for you to support your independent book sellers.
Suzy Chase: To purchase The Main House and support the podcast head on over to decoratingbythebook.com. And thanks Kathleen so much for coming on Decorating by the Book Podcast.
Kathleen Hackett: Thank you so much Suzy I really had fun and appreciate it. Thank you.
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