Tom Stringer Design Partners

Lake Maxinkuckee, Indiana. Pastries beckon on an oak farm table. Light filters through flowered Roman shades. In a farmhouse kitchen, Tom Stringer has called on simple materials — Shaker cabinets, hand-cut subway tile, butted-board woodwork — to make a relaxed whole that evokes family memories and traditions, though the house itself isn’t even a decade old. Stringer combined a custom table and reproduction ladderback chairs from Mulligan’s with antique pieces from 1stDibs: choice yellowware bowls and a Swedish cabinet (just out of view). Having nailed the Midwestern look, he took a bit of a visual vacation. “I think the green-and-white-striped, beaded Yoruba headdress from Nigeria [on the counter] is a great little surprise,” he notes. “It acknowledges that this is a family that travels widely and speaks to their great love for Africa.” Not all family traditions begin at home, in other words. But all are welcome here.