At Home: Holiday Edition

Stepping into Jeffrey Parker’s and Chance Negri’s home, “Pineborough,” in East Hampton last Friday afternoon was like being transported to a warm and welcoming Christmas wonderland. Holly and Rudolph, the couple’s two Lakeland terriers, ushered their guest into a house that smelled heavenly, thanks to cinnamon-scented Cannelle and woodsy-smelling Cyprès Diptyque candles. Holiday tunes such as “Let It Snow” and “Sleigh Ride” were playing from a Christmas jazz iPod play list, the home’s two fireplaces were lit and glowing; and tasteful holiday decorations were featured in practically every room.

Christmas is a special time for Mr. Parker, an interior designer, and his partner, Mr. Negri, a director for Hale and Hearty Soups. The two have managed to fill both their Manhattan apartment and East Hampton home with special holiday treasures—including a tree filled with Christopher Radko ornaments in the city and six trees, ranging from tabletop size to massively looming, at their 2,600-square-foot English-shingled, mock French mansard-style home here on the East End.

“I love this holiday,” Mr. Parker said on Friday. “It’s the one time of the year you can be childlike and whimsical when decorating.”

The holiday decorations and memorabilia which fill the couple’s East Hampton home come from family collections, gifts from friends and objects picked up from travels around the world. Mr. Parker, the principal of Jeffrey Parker Interiors in Manhattan, has acquired all sorts of objets d’art while working with clients in Manhattan, the Hamptons, Greenwich, Connecticut and Palm Beach, Florida and such faraway locales as London, Paris, Florence and the Sultanate of Oman.

Pointing out some favorite items on the main tree (which Mr. Parker estimated contained some 600 or 700 ornaments and took 24 working hours to put up and decorate) in the living room, Mr. Parker showed off a 120-year-old ornament given to him by a friend and another that his parents, Orian and Helen Parker, gave to him when he was only 8. He’s also particularly fond of a working antique Lionel train set and village once belonging to his father that now circles the base of the tree. “They most take me back to my childhood,” he said simply.

One of the best ways to tastefully decorate for a holiday is to feature fresh flowers and greenery, Mr. Parker said. There were many examples of that philosophy throughout the house—a green garland and a pine wreath hanging on the front door, a poinsettia, amaryllis and pinecone arrangement grouped under a Paton Miller painting in the entryway, and a simple arrangement of red and white roses, holly and pine on a low table in the living room.

Other notable nature-based decorations in the living room included a tall red berry and branch arrangement on the console table—“I always have something with branches here,” Mr. Parker said.”—and an arrangement comprised of all sorts of plant material found on the property “Did that this morning,” he added.

Other significant holiday touches in the living room included presents wrapped in red paper embossed with gold pinecones and tied with red and gold ribbon piled in front of a table at the living room entrance and a couple of folders of sheet music of Christmas songs sitting atop the black Yamaha piano.

But it’s the dining room, which was added in 2001 by East Hampton-based Plum Builders, that is Mr. Parker’s favorite room at “Pineborough.”

“Because this is the place where we very frequently entertain 12 to 14 people for dinner,” he said. “It’s the great center, the nucleus of the house.”

The dining room contains the second of the two-bedroom home’s two fireplaces (the other is in the living room), a dining table which converts from an eight-seater to comfortably fit nearly twice that many guests, and a chandelier bedecked with garland, berries and ornamental birds. Elaborately dressed Santa Claus figures perch on either end of the fireplace mantel.

The living room and dining room feature prominently when it comes to entertaining, holiday and otherwise. The couple frequently hosts dinner parties and every year they throw a giant party on the Saturday before Christmas. Last year, the festivities happened to fall on the day of the big blizzard.

“At the beginning of the evening, it was this light Charlie Brown snow but we ended up shoveling people out six times that night,” Mr. Parker said. “The roads were a mess but being here for the holiday, warm and cozy with all our friends, was one of the best parties ever.”