A converted barn in the Berkshires has New York flair
MONTEREY -- Karen Allen says she wants to simplify, but it's going to be a tough task. The actress who shot to fame as the ingénue in ''Animal House" and starred opposite Harrison Ford in ''Raiders of the Lost Ark" bought a home in the Berkshires in 1988, and she has been filling it with an eclectic mix of things she loves ever since.
You can tell she's a collector as soon as you enter the house. Juxtapositions of furniture and artwork spanning style, space, and centuries line the cathedral-ceilinged living room. Deep teal walls create a perfect backdrop for her Tibetan Tankas paintings of Buddhist iconography purported to have healing properties and a primitive Indian diagram of the chakras, which hint at her fascination with Eastern philosophy and her longstanding yoga practice. Two contemporary paintings by Dutch actor/painter Jeroen Krabbé represent her collection of art by friends. Functional stoneware from her favorite potter, Nicholas Mosse of County Kilkenny, Ireland, sits atop a peeling-paint cupboard. ''When I first moved here people were trying to give these away," she says of the country cupboard. ''Now you see them and they'd be like $2,000 or something."
A cello, an accordion, a banjo, djembe drums, and acoustic and electric guitars surround an upright piano, which holds harmonicas, a mandolin, and a soprano guitar. Most of the instruments belong to her teenage son, Nick; in addition, he also lays claim to a momentous stack of cookbooks.
''Nick wants to be a chef," explains Allen. ''The kitchen is the one realm that if we got an influx of cash we would renovate. He hates this stove," she confides, pointing to the offending appliance in the bright blue kitchen. Nick has also commandeered the basement, where he hosts school friends on overstuffed furniture from Allen's former Manhattan apartment. ''He has sleepovers constantly," she says. ''There's lots of kids here all the time."
In the conversation corner, Mission lamps atop African and Arts & Crafts tables and a 19th-century Chinese calligraphied cabinet cast insufficient light on two wooden Taos daybeds strewn with rugs and pillows she picked up on exotic film shoots. ''When I was in Morocco, I was just crazy about their textiles," she exclaims.
The home -- a late-18th-century barn converted to a house in 1900 -- reflects Allen's lifelong love affair with textiles. Allen found her home on New Year's Day after looking for a weekend place in the Berkshires on and off for about seven years. She moved here full time after 9/11 made life in New York less appealing, but before leaving town she studied knitting machines at Manhattan's Fashion Institute of Technology. A hand-knitter since youth, Allen had attended FIT in her late teens, intending to become a clothing designer. As her acting career waned, she decided to follow her calling. She now designs and creates intricately patterned sweaters, scarves, hats, and other knitwear in cashmere and merino wool (karenallen-fiberarts.com). Her goods fit in perfectly in her home; their rich palette reflects the mélange of colors and patterns throughout the house.
The dense decor sprawls into two downstairs bedrooms and the gracious center hall, but the palette lightens and the clutter thins upon ascent into the pale-blue upper-floor hallway. Mounting a short set of stairs to Allen's Stickley bed reveals another short flight winding down to her bathroom and yet another to her office space. Allen had to evict an attic full of bats to create this three-tiered, window-filled aerie. It is here that a visitor comprehends that the house has pulled off a role as convincingly as any that Allen has played. The living room, with its soaring cathedral ceiling, lies directly below the bedroom; the cathedral ceiling is false. In addition, the apex of the living room ceiling runs perpendicular to the actual supporting beams of the former barn; the house's true structure is revealed in Allen's suite.
