Restraining order

If it's possible to judge a city by its decorators' show house, Boston's conservatism and reserve are still very much alive and well.

The Junior League's annual Decorators' Show House -- one of the city's oldest and most venerable design events -- is a kind of rite of spring in Boston; think the New England Flower Show. Like other show houses around the country, a sponsoring organization raising money for a good cause identifies a vacant house, recruits a cadre of designers to redecorate it, and sells tickets to the public so they can ogle, snitch ideas, or shop for a designer for themselves. After a run of a few weeks, the whole place is cleared out, its short-lived glorious self a thing of the past.

``It becomes like a ghost," says Washington, D.C., designer Skip Sroka, a veteran show house participant.

This year's 34th annual show house is a grand Italianate edifice near Harvard Square -- the Richard Henry Dana Jr. House built, in 1851 and owned by the Episcopal Divinity School. More than two dozen New England designers were selected by a Junior League committee to decorate a section of the house, based on the preliminary sketches they submitted. They include a number of prominent designers, among them Gregory Lombardi, Michael Carter, Karin Weller, Laura Glen , Kay Bailey McKallagat, and Gregory Van Boven, who was honored by the Junior League for his ``premier status in the field" and community service.

The end result is definitely appealing -- a showcase of soothing color schemes, finely wrought murals, fine antiques and art, and elegant floor coverings, upholstery, and window treatments. Even though the designers all worked independently, the result is surprisingly harmonious. The overall zeitgeist seems to be timelessness, refinement, ``calm sophistication," as Van Boven writes in a designer's statement about his living room.

What the show house is not is bold, contemporary, or heaven forbid, avant garde. It does not push envelopes or rock boats. To be sure, there are occasional (and welcome ) exceptions. Patricia Finn injected flare into a bathroom with a set of striking, unexpected Shoji sliding screens installed next to the toilet. Diana Kiker Kearns and Janet Heyde added pizzazz to a staid gentleman's library with a colorful, multipiece polyacrylic wall hanging. Kris Shaffer worked wonders with her modest space -- a 6-by-8-foot wooden porch -- transforming it into a Japanese-inspired alcove, featuring a gold leaf mural, a fountain, and a mound of smooth stones.

But well-appointed as the house is, you have to ask: What decade is this? The shelter magazines are telling us that color is the thing, that eclecticism is in. For example, this year's much-publicized Kips Bay Decorator Show House in New York, founded the same year as the Junior League's, is heartily embracing innovative design. It was held in a neo-French Renaissance townhouse on the Upper East Side and showed Lucite furniture, LED lighting that changed color, a gallery of oil paintings featuring dogs dressed like humans, an ejection seat from a 1955 bomber, and a mural in the colors of India.

So why are so many talented designers in Boston playing it safe when they have the chance to take creative chances?

``New England designers tend to be quite traditional and conservative," said Shaffer.

``It's not a requirement of ours to do traditional, [but many designers] felt it was such a classic house with classic design, and they are trying to honor the house," says Elizabeth Tyminski, Junior League of Boston president.

Sroka sees it differently. ``Design is all about the new, fresh approach, about how we really live today?" he says. ``If I was a designer participating in something historic, I would honor the past but I would not be a slave to it." -- LINDA MATCHAN

The Junior League of Boston's 34th annual Decorators' Show House Richard Henry Dana Jr. House, 4 Berkeley St., Cambridge. It runs through Sunday. www.jlboston.org/showhouse2006 or call 617-536-9640.