Martha Stewart's summer retreat in Maine is just as chic as you'd expect.
The food and lifestyle expert recently opened her home to Architectural Digest, and man, we're glad she did: The three-story hillside manor, known as Skylands, was built in 1925 and comes with a good deal of history. Duncan Candler designed the sprawling, 63-acre estate for automobile magnate Edsel Ford, and it remained in the Ford family's possession until Eleanor Ford's death in 1980. Stewart acquired the estate in 1997, and the rest is, well, new history!
Kevin Sharkey, executive editorial director of Martha Stewart Living, assisted Martha in decorating the home, which boasts a whopping 12 bedrooms, several external buildings for living and entertainment and luxe-meets-rustic features such as polished copper and waxed wood. (When can we visit?) Martha loves the home so much, in fact, that she calls the residence her "favorite place." (That's a seal of approval if we've ever heard one!)
Stewart's quaint but spacious kitchen comes replete with vintage Pewabic tiles, an antique fishmonger's table and shelves filled to the proverbial brim with white china (Ford's silver, glassware, china and linens were included in the purchase of the home, by the way).
"I didn't have to buy a plate," Stewart quipped, noting, however, that she did add her "fair share."
Her sunlit living hall features custom-made couches, a faux-bois cement table and a vintage tassel-footed metal table.
The home obviously means a lot to Stewart, who spends the brunt of her July and August in Maine.
"I look at myself as the caretaker of an American treasure," she said.
The July 2015 issue of Architectural Digest is on newsstands now.