Happy Menocal has brought an artist’s sensibility to her family’s 1700s farmhouse in Bedford, New York, creating interiors that treat the historic home as a canvas rather than a fixed period setting.
The house, surrounded by old-growth forest, features floor-to-ceiling murals and textiles designed by Menocal herself. The work gives the rooms a strongly authored identity while retaining the farmhouse as the central architectural frame.
Among the most unconventional elements are chandeliers assembled from disposable lasagna trays — a deliberately ordinary material recast as decorative lighting. The gesture places handmade invention and visual humor alongside the home’s age and rural setting.
As Architectural Digest reports, Menocal’s approach extends across the interiors, unifying painted surfaces, textiles and found-material objects. The result demonstrates how personal artistic practice can guide a sensitive, highly individual renovation of a historic residence.
