Updated on November 1, 2022: Renowned decorator and antiques connoisseur Timothy Furlow Gatewood passed away on October 29, 2022. Often described as a true Southern gentleman, Gatewood was celebrated for his vast knowledge of antiques, serving as a buyer for John Rosselli in the south for many decades. In 2011, Gatewood graciously welcomed VERANDA into his beloved Americus, Georgia cottage which he saved from destruction.
While it doesn’t look it now, this splendid, mid-19th-century gothic house was sawn in half and trucked 65 miles through Georgia.“Anywhere I travel, I’m always looking at houses,” says Furlow Gatewood. “This one was going to be torn down.”
When the structure arrived at his property in Americus, a passerby was heard to say: “There goes the neighborhood.” Well, talk about premature judgments!
Of course, it was a stylish old house to begin with, chockablock with handsome moldings and 16-foot ceilings, and Gatewood only enhanced its distinction. He’s far too modest to say so, but he knows pretty much everything there is to know about vernacular architecture, great design, and antiques. The decorator liked its “rusticated” faux stone exterior so much that he asked his contractor to reproduce its texture with beveled wood in the hall. Gatewood is so knowledgeable that he has been design-world baron John Rosselli’s associate and an antique buyer in the South for 40 years, scouting every local show. “It’s the best entertainment I have down here,” he chuckles. If you don’t count decorating, that is. And dogs. And peacocks.
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“I was really anxious to finish this house,” Gatewood says, and he did it in just 18 months with consummate, timeless style. It helped that many of the furnishings came from John Rosselli’s bountiful inventory: the tables, consoles, wall brackets, mirrors, beds, even the imposing plaster Diana in the back hall. Gatewood found the goddess hidden in Rosselli’s basement—there, most likely because the deer accompanying her is missing its head. The Oriental rugs and antique delftware were Gatewood’s own, however, and he had the feathery, white tole fronds on the walls made for him in India.
“John and I go to India quite a lot,” he says. (You should know that Gatewood is 90 years old.)
Gatewood says the two spacious living rooms and dining room are painted gray and white because they’re “very cooling." (He didn’t mix that gorgeous gray himself and hastens to add, “It came right out of the Benjamin Moore can!”) Throughout the house, most of the seating was upholstered in subtle shades of white, cream, and the occasional stripe, and every room is smartly punched up by his ubiquitous blue-and-white porcelain.
There’s no chandelier in the dining room, you may have noticed. Instead, the room is gently lit by floor and table lamps. The neat gray-and-white squares painted on the original hard-pine floor were executed by John Campbell, an old school friend. Gatewood is partial to bare floors because they’re best for doggy “accidents.” Those sisal rugs in the two living rooms are terrible, he laughs.
Along with a splendid belvedere, where one of his 40—yes, 40—peacocks roosts, he’s added rooms to the original cottage: a bathroom, a kitchen, and, best of all, an airy trellised porch furnished in a throwaway mix of wicker, happy ikats, and batiks. The painted floor is gray, naturally, and the plants are changed seasonally.
If this grand cottage seems effortless and breezy, that's because it is. Nothing’s overworked, nothing’s overthought, nothing’s overlooked. It’s polished, relaxed, and divine. Should that surprise us? No, this is what comes with maturity and taste. Not to mention talent.
This feature originally appeared in the May/June 2011 issue of VERANDA. Renovation, interior design, and landscape design by Furlow Gatewood; photography by Max Kim-Bee; produced by Carolyn Englefield; written by Carol Prisant.
