Tom Deacon’s life, like his work, is a mix of old and new, indoors and out. An architect by training, he became renowned as a furniture designer, leading Canadian manufacturer Keilhauer to its first mass-produced chair, the Tom, an innovation in high-tech plastic, and then back into upholstered fame with his Danforth chair, for a time the official seat in the White House Situation Room.

With a thriving practice based in Toronto, Tom bought a tall Victorian there in 1987, which he and his then partner renovated to give it a wide-open interior. In 2000 he left it all behind to dig in the dirt on land he owns in the countryside, creating intricate gardens and landscapes.

A decade later, the professional world again beckoned, but Tom, now single, found his Toronto home no longer suited him. “It felt like living in the shell of a former life,” he says. So he did as a designer does: He went back to the drawing board. This time Tom was aiming for a better synthesis of the house’s two previous styles. “I wanted something that was more modern than Victorian,” he says, “and yet with a little more definition and variety.”

Tom called on his good friend and fellow designer Andrew Jones to help him rethink the three-story building. “Simplicity, warmth, a sense of modesty—but drama as well” is how Jones sums up their shared sensibility. A key consideration was how the design would set off Tom’s diverse collection of furniture, art, and objects, which ranges from antique tools to a Richard Serra etching. The idea was to create a series of quiet spaces that would enhance the experience of the collection rather than compete with it.

The scope of the work was vast. “Down to the studs doesn’t cover it,” says Tom. “The studs all came out, as well as the floor joists.” The rear third of the house, apart from a common wall, was torn down and lowered to grade. After a coat of gray stucco was stripped from the facade, masons replaced the damaged brick beneath, copying ornamental details from neighboring houses and old photographs.

The main entrance was moved from the front to partway down the side, where a solid wooden door with a clerestory window and sidelight now opens into an oak-clad vestibule. Inside, the dining area, lit by a dramatic two-story light well, fills the middle of the first floor.

Beyond it are a compact kitchen and spacious sitting room whose limestone floor continues past the sliding glass wall into the back courtyard. “There’s no real division between the garden and house,” says Jones. “We always thought of these spaces as one.”

“Architects tend to think of the building first, the interiors second, and last, the furniture. Our approach was the opposite.”
—Andrew Jones, designer

The living room is up front, a few steps above the dining area. Here, a concrete hearth runs the length of a side wall, and a beam from an 18th-century barn creates a continuous, bench-like sill beneath the arched windows, emphasizing the breadth of the space and adding a note of wabi-sabi.

A steel handrail along the dining area’s steps curves around the end of a wall, signaling a staircase to Tom’s library, where custom white-oak millwork holds design books and treasured objects—including a Shaker sweater-stretcher, which Tom admires for its ambiguous form and idiosyncratic purpose.

The back of the library is open to the light well, at the top of which is a large angled skylight that illuminates Tom’s bedroom, on the third floor.

The basement, previously service space, was converted into a workshop and studio—though its future use was unclear at the time, since by then Tom was shifting away from furniture design altogether. But in 2018 he reinvented himself as an artist, cutting ailing ash trees on his country property and turning them into sinuous sculpture.

His studio looks out at a sunken garden enclosed by a new dry-laid limestone wall. Invisible from the street, the wall is a private source of inspiration for Tom: “It’s a perfect example of the combination of beauty and utility,” he says.

Project Credits:

Design: Andrew Jones Design and Tom Deacon

Contracting: Peloton Contracting

Structural Engineering: Egberts Engineering

Cabinetry Fabrication: Built Work Design

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Designer and Artist Tom Deacon Goes Back to the Drawing Board to Re-Renovate His Home and Studio