Swim coach Bob Bowman's rustic retreat in Monkton is filled with personal touches that make the place his own.
But there's not a tchotchke in sight.
With the guidance of designer Seth Foster of Baltimore's Foster Knott LLC, Bowman learned how to incorporate his hobbies and passions into the design of his home but without clutter and distracting collectibles — eye noise that often trips up people when they try to make a show home their show home.
Here's a few tricks Foster showed Bowman:
Elegant Not Random: Bowman adores horses. The coach used to own racehorses and one day hopes to have more. Foster tips his hat to Bowman's equestrian side with a series of black and white historical news photos from the Preakness, displayed together in the living room. The photographs are treated as art, all the same size and uniformly framed and matted.
Don't Be Literal: Time is a driving force in Bowman's world — his whole raison d'etre is helping athletes take up less of it. Foster wanted to feature that element in Bowman's house, but artistically, not literally, with, say, actual clocks or stopwatches. The decorator found a framed antique flight schedule to hang in the great room and for Bowman's bedroom, photographs by an artist interested in objects crushed into concrete — in this case, a watch.
Edit: As a coach who has twice known Olympic glory, Bowman isn't short on championship paraphernalia, souvenir front pages and other mementos. But one really has to look to find it in his house. Upstairs there's a little jar of pool water from Sydney. The framed headlines are generally out of sight in his office. The most obvious item? A Big 10 athletic conference blanket, folded small and allowed to rest on the living room sofa.
"There isn't a lot of stuff in Bob's house," Foster says. "It's about editing the things that speak to our clients and finding a way to fit them into their lives."