Jean Clayton
Christine’s, Mountain Brook
The breakfast room, created by Jean Clayton and her team at Christine’s in Mountain Brook Village, is so bright and cheerful that even waking up to a plain bowl of Cheerios could turn into a pleasant experience.
Clayton said a new line by a well-known company was behind her decision to choose the breakfast room as her ShowHouse space.
“What really prompted me is that MacKenzie-Childs was introducing its Butterfly Garden line,” she said.
The design on the plates and other decorative items in the room features butterflies in jaunty colors—and in MacKenzie-Child’s trademark black and white checks.
The butterfly motif also fit well into Clayton’s desire to take advantage of the room’s setting.
“I wanted to bring the outdoors in,” she said. “The room has such a fabulous view with the lake outside.”
Finding the right table for the breakfast room was crucial, too. Clayton said she loves the work of Ben Smith, who owns Welded Wood in Birmingham, and found that one of his creations, a table base shaped like a tree trunk, was the perfect piece.
“When I saw that table base, I thought, ‘That’s it,’” she said. “It had an old wooden top, which I thought would make the room look smaller and darker. I asked Ben to replace it with a glass top. He’ll do whatever you want. He’s so adaptable.”
Also just right for the room were French chairs Clayton discovered at Tricia’s Treasures in Homewood.
“We needed something substantial, and I loved the hand-carved shells on the chairs,” she said.
A Kilim rug from Paige Albright Orientals, also in Mountain Brook Village, “picked up on the colors I was using,” Clayton said.
MacKenzie-Childs products dress up the fireplace as well as the table. ShowHouse visitors who look closely at the forged iron fire screen will find a little girl on a swing, and boxwood topiaries are topped with black-and-white checked finials.
A sense of fun comes into play with a child-sized MacKenzie-Childs table and chairs. Ready to have tea with a stuffed monkey is a life-sized—and very realistic-looking–doll, which Clayton said she bought years ago from Mary Charles Doll House in Mountain Brook.
“It looks like a child,” she said. “When I put her and other dolls like her in our store windows at Christmas, some people think they’re actually children.”
Another playful—but useful—resident of the breakfast room is a MacKenzie-Childs pig-shaped grill. Made of terra cotta, the portly fellow sits on an iron stand.
“You can cook in it or use it to serve, too,” Clayton said. “It could even sit on a kitchen island.”
