"It was in really bad shape, but I sensed its potential," he says. When his future client, a Swiss teacher who fell in love with the Italian Riviera, walked into his office, even she was skeptical. "Many people were," he continues. "It was an abandoned and damp property, but I convinced her. Now she's happy."
I moved to the Hamptons, in spite of it being the Hamptons, and later to the Cotswolds, in spite of it being the "Hamptons of England." The status-symbol side of these places was never what drew me in. The Hamptons and the Cotswolds are completely different from one another, but there's a reason they're both so popular: They're fantastic. They have beautiful houses, interesting people, and great restaurants and stores.
They're four stories tall with brick façades and small gated gardens, but they have almost nothing else in common. Some have squared-off, stepped-up gables, others rise into pointy peaks, and others are capped with mansard roofs and teensy dormer windows. Cast iron that frames windows and cornices has been pressed into scrolled ferns and sunbursts and animal heads. Some have stripes of rough stone, others have rows of dentil molding.
"This house is the perfect combination of a Sea Ranch cabin and a midcentury post-and-beam, filtered through a Japanese lens," says Duncombe, a marketing executive and sculptor. "When the sunlight dances on the walls and furniture, the whole place comes alive."
