For several years now, since blogging took the Internet by storm, a photo of a bedroom I had once admired began to circulate. And, more recently, the same bedroom began showing up on Pinterest. I kept thinking to myself “If I love the bedroom this much the rest of the residence must be equally charming. But where had I seen it? Do I still have the magazine it was featured in?” I was quite certain I had seen it in House & Garden some twenty years ago. And sure enough, when I happened upon the July, 1992, issue of House & Garden last week there it was: Spanish interior designer Paco Muñoz’s country house in Pedraza, Spain.
Suddenly every room, not only the red ochre washed bedroom, came flooding back to me. It was like seeing an old friend after twenty-some odd years later, still as warm, gracious and inviting. It doesn’t hurt, either, that his patched collection of 18th-century structures in a medieval village represents what I love and admire about Spanish, as well as Portuguese, country houses with their inviting and timeless pared-down aesthetic – hand-troweled plaster walls, tile and wood floors, simple cottons and linens, earthen palette and regional decorative arts. As we welcome the autumnal colors of Fall I can’t think of a better place to be than at Senior Muñoz’s rustic yet refined country house in the Castille region of Spain.
The two-story library is defined by its original timbers and beckons the inquisitive eye to discover its hidden secrets. Oh, how I would love to have this space to work in every day!
At one end of the library is a seating arrangement dominated by an 18th-century door frame made into a mirror hanging above the fireplace.
Muñoz created a sunny atmosphere for the breakfast room with bright yellow painted walls and beams and country-inspired fabrics from Souleiado.
The spare yet warm gallery reminds me of the work of Axel Vervoordt, save for the obvious over-scaled and loosely draped sofas which hint of the 90’s. The triptych against the back wall is by Spanish artist Tapies and the sculpture is by Palazuelo.
The master bedroom is simply white and meditative, and void of extraneous decoration. I would love to remove every tabletop item I see and strip it bare – along with the bows!
The bedroom that lived on in my dreams is reserved for guests. The stucco on the walls was tinted to create a warm background for 19th-century Spanish beds hung with Bennison fabric. It’s the absolute perfect Spanish country house bedroom!
Fifteenth-century grilles were fitted between stone walls to open up the view of the pool terrace.
Paco and Sabine Muñoz on a terrace as photographed in 1992 for House & Garden.
House & Garden, July 1992. Photography by Amparo Garrido
