ARTS AND ANTIQUES

The inspiration for the nursery that Chloe Warner designed for her son came while she was shopping with a client in Los Angeles. "Until that day, I'd been looking at clean-lined, modern baby furniture, and I just wasn't that inspired." she says. "But when I spotted a bent-wood crib in the window of an antiques store, I had to have it."

She later learned that the piece was manufactured in 1895 by J & J Kohn, and that the Museum of Modern Art in New York has one in its collection. "The one in the store was faded and chipped and lined with a stained satin fabric," says Warner. "I bought it, thinking it would be perfect if I had a girl."

Warner had the crib stripped and repainted with a bright white, no-VOC paint. She then used the existing satin insert as a template for a new (and easily washable) cotton liner that's trimmed with masculine blue and khaki colors because, as she soon learned, she was carrying a baby boy she would name Ferris Livingston Warner.

"For the wall and ceiling colors I chose a mink brown and a cloudy gray-blue." says WArner. "It's boyishg and not at all frou-frou." The colors are picked up in another dramatic piece of furniture: a Chinese dresser that WArner outfitted as a changing table. "I definitely got some funny looks when I said I was going to use this beautiful dresser as a place to change diapers, " she says. "But right now it works because it has the right-sized storage for his diaper equipment and clothes. Down the road it would be a perfect sideboard in the dining room."