The Womacks’ living room mantel is decorated with treasures collected from the couple’s travels, including a 300-year-old blue-and-white Delft bowl and a Greek Tanagra figurine dating back to 300 B.C. found at the Paris Flea Market. In the 1830s, mantels were painted with black paint as a sign of wealth and to hide the soot.
Using furniture as a canvas, Rob Womack and Catherine Roseberry have garnered international acclaim. Their painted pieces have graced the halls of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Virginia Governor’s Mansion — one of their first clients was President Lyndon B. Johnson’s daughter and Virginia first lady Lynda Robb.
The couple could have started their art business, Coloratura, anywhere, but they have found plenty of inspiration in Richmond, whether from fellow Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts graduates, their creative circle of friends or inside their historic home.
“We could have painted furniture someplace else, but we saw no reason to leave,” Roseberry says. “Richmond is such an art-friendly town.”
While shopping for a home and studio in 1991, the couple discovered a circa-1830s Federal house on Thimble Lane.
“The condition was daunting, and at first we walked away,” Womack recalls. “But it kept calling us back. I guess you could say it was love at second sight.”
The home is part of Henrico County’s significant and rare inventory of early architecture and historic sites. Notable features include two front doors, an English basement, a half upper story, seven fireplaces and ceilings that are just under 7 feet tall.
In the 1830s, many homes had two front doors: one to the formal sitting room for guests and the other to the private family area.
“It’s very architecturally unique and gives us the space to work on big pieces for months at a time — we couldn’t do that and live in Manhattan,” Womack says.
The couple is not intimidated by hard work. Their own art process is meticulous and labor intensive. Each piece of furniture has to be stripped down to the bare wood, painted in intricate detail and then burnished and polished.
Womack spent weeks restoring two of the home’s original pine doors. “They had been painted to look like tiger maple, and I love that their painted embellishment back then is much like the furniture painting that we do today,” he says.
Rob Womack painted the vintage drop-leaf table in a ribbon-and-rose pattern inspired by an inlaid lapis table he saw in the Piti Palace in Florence, Italy. The white-on-white assemblage is by John Morgan, and the large etching is by the late Richmond artist Ann Chenoweth.
The house was last renovated in 1940, when then-owner Knoll Arnold installed plumbing and electricity and gave the street its name. A well-known seamstress, she hosted fittings at the home for the who’s who of Richmond for grand events such as the Governor’s Ball.
“When we were working on the house and cleaning the gaps between the floorboards, we’d occasionally come up with Mrs. Arnold’s silver pins,” Roseberry says.
“We love the fact there was another creative person living here,” Womack adds.
When they’re not working in their light-filled studio behind the kitchen, the couple is cozied up in the front living room, surrounded by special pieces they’ve curated and created. Among their objets d’art are stacks of books; travel keepsakes; and pottery, prints and etchings created by artist friends.
“We work from art history and [take] inspiration from other artists and other cultures,” Womack says.
The couple does not collect Colonial- or Federal-period furnishings that are historically accurate to the house, but rather pieces that inspire them.
“If it’s an interesting or beautiful thing, then it holds its own,” Womack says. “We’ve got this modernist coffee table I painted next to my grandmother’s Chippendale sofa, and it works.”
