The Lotus Room: Eastern Light, Gifts and Adventures
Morning enters exuberantly in the Lotus Room.
Northeast light pours through the windows, framed by deep red drapes, and moves quickly across the floor, up the walls, into the corners.
This room, like much of Spillian, is furnished the way our lives are furnished. Through travel and adventure, through friendship, through gifts that carry stories with them. Antique red-painted wooden chests from China, given to us by neighbors at our farm, brought here from his parents’ home. Japanese prints Mark found on his travels, marking memories. Paper lanterns overhead, echoing the night markets he loved there. A Japanese brass teapot, a gift from friends. A Balinese bowl, given to us as a wedding present many years ago. A chair from my parents’ house, its lines quietly recalling bamboo.
And in a place of honor: a bronze-painted plaster relief from Japan, given to us by Haruna, the Japanese woman who owned Spillian before we did.
She never lived here full-time, but she also was dreaming an idea into being. She had hoped to create a meditation center, a place of stillness and connection. That dream never came to pass, but she carried it with her for over two decades. During that time, she became the house’s guardian; quietly, persistently. She worked with an architect who understood historic preservation, and together they stabilized what was falling apart: the roof, the foundations, the heating systems. She made sure it would survive.
We never met her. She was housebound in her New York apartment when we began the process of buying Spillian, fragile but fierce, and she agreed to pass the house on to us only after we had convinced her that we, too, understood that we were stewards rather than owners, and were dreaming a future that honored its past. (Learn more about Spillian’s history here!)
When she decided we were worthy, she gave us the plaster relief now hanging in the Lotus Room. A part of her story, and a quiet gesture of generosity, continuity, and hope.
The room holds that story, even as it tells others.
The Art and Craft of Inspiration
The Lotus Room also gestures toward the moment in which this house was built. In the late 19th century, as Japan was opening to the West, Western artists and architects were captivated by Japanese forms and philosophies of design. That influence flowed—sometimes respectfully, sometimes clumsily—into the Arts and Crafts movement, and into homes like this one. The connection is subtle, but it’s there in the bones, in the tree of life pattern on the exterior, and even in the pine-clad walls that echo the rustic historic buildings of Japan.
Mark felt it too. He traveled to Japan several times as a lighting designer, touring with opera and ballet companies. And he fell in love with temples that breathe, with the elegance of old farmhouses, with the way vernacular architecture in Japan holds space without needing to fill it. He was fascinated by how the philosophy of those designs found their way into Western architecture, especially in the Arts and Crafts era.
It’s a quiet homage, shaped by affection, curiosity, and of course, whimsy. Because, always whimsy in a house that revels.
The Lotus Room holds a conversation across time and space, between aesthetics, between lineages of craft, between stewards. It is a room to honor crossing paths.
And sometimes, in the morning light, if you look out just the right window, you’ll see the bald eagles nesting in the trees down the hill.
If you’re curious to go deeper into the house, stay tuned—we’re opening the doors, one by one, to each of Spillian’s eight guest rooms. Every room holds a tale. Here’s where we began…
See you there!
Leigh Melander, PhD
Spllian Co-Founder/Partner
PS: The photo above is by Adam Reines, photographer and Spillian wedding alumn!
