The Judges
From left to right: Bruce Irving, Patti Kraft, and Meichi Peng.
(Globe Staff / George Rizer)If anything is subjective, it's taste. Taste in clothes, taste in food, taste in home design. But we feel supremely confident that the judges who selected this year's winners in our Home of the Year contest know style when they see it. They know it's not about the size or the cost of the work, but about the manner in which it was done. For the record, entrants were not identified by name, location, or professional affiliation, to ensure none of the judges knew whose work they were seeing.
And now, the judges:
Bruce Irving produced the WGBH-TV series This Old House and its sister shows for 17 years. He is a home-renovation consultant, vice chairman of the Cambridge Historical Commission, and a contributing editor at Boston Globe Media's Design New England magazine.
Patti Kraft is the owner, creative director, and buyer of Bellezza Home and Garden in Newton, a shop that specializes in hand-painted Italian ceramics. She also serves on the Advisory Committee of Gateway Arts in Brookline.
Meichi Peng has been an interior designer for nearly a decade. In 2006, she founded her own Boston-based firm (meichipeng.com), where, in addition to interior design, she sells her own line of handcrafted leather goods.
