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Introduction
Beauport, the summer home of interior designer Henry Davis Sleeper, captivates the imagination not only because of its dramatic location but because of its wit. Filled with room after room of delightful objects meant to astonish and amuse, Beauport is an intellectual fun house originally designed almost a century ago to entertain such luminaries as European art collector Isabella Stewart Gardner, Harvard economics professor A. Piatt Andrew, heiress Caroline Sinkler, and Okakura Kakuzo, curator of Asian art at the Museum of Fine Arts and author of “The Book of Tea.”
In modern terms, Sleeper was a master recycler, recreating America’s colonial past using doors, panels, beams, and floorboards rescued from derelict early New England homes. His ingenious use of farm-house furnishings, pottery, glassware, baskets, and tools sparked Henry Francis du Pont’s interest in Americana which culminated in the establishment of the Winterthur Museum. Even house guests as wealthy as John D. Rockefeller, Jr. appreciated the atmosphere of elegance that Sleeper was able to create with materials often obtained from salvage dealers.
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