Home Tour: Inside a Grande Dame Shaughnessy Home Dressed Up for the Holidays

For years, Christmas at Chris and Tara Poseley’s house wasn’t really about tradition. Instead, it was more about being away from home: the California-based couple would typically pack up their two boys and head to Minnesota to spend the holiday with Chris’s mom. But when the family decamped to Canada in 2014 for work, the newly arrived expats were ready to start building their own traditions.

Their first Christmas was spent in a rental before they purchased a modern townhouse in Vancouver’s False Creek. However, with university-aged children home for the holidays, the Poseleys quickly realized they’d downsized too soon. When one of the grand dames in the city’s tony Shaughnessy neighbourhood hit the market in 2021—12,000 square feet reimagined into three separate 4,000-square-foot luxury townhouses—they knew one of those luxury townhouses would be the perfect blank canvas to create all their holiday dreams.

They loved that the stately Tudor shell conjured Christmases of yore, but the interior, with its with gold swan faucets, wall-to-wall carpet and oak panelling, was more Dynasty reruns than Charles Dickens. “But I just loved how light and airy it felt,” says Tara.

“It was a classic house that we could give more of a clean, modern aesthetic to,” adds Chris. The couple turned to designer Jocelyn Ross of Jocelyn Ross Studioworks to help create the contemporary backdrop for all their future forever-home holidays.

On their wish list: a home suited to holiday entertaining, but one that could also cozily accommodate their visiting young-adult boys, Logan and Quinn. As such, Ross brought the home down to the studs and recast it as a serene neutral canvas from which to showcase the couple’s modern art collection. When the renovation was complete 18 months later, the home was finally ready for festive flourish. “I wanted it to feel different, personal, art-forward and meaningful,” says Ross. “The house already told a strong visual story as the clients are passionate collectors, and it was important to them to include local and Canadian pieces.” Artists like Ian Wallace, Brent Comber, Matthew McCormick, Martha Sturdy and Yasmeen Strang loom large.

The key, Ross felt, was to find a way to re­imagine Christmas through a modern artistic lens that honoured both the soul of the house (the mansion’s original owners were Vancouver lumber barons) and the fuss-free personality of her clients. “We love bringing a modern minimalist aesthetic to traditional homes,” says Chris. Wood and nature would be the cues, so the first stop, naturally, was to visit artist and wood furniture maker Brent Comber’s studio to select holiday pieces that felt site-specific. Ross had first chosen Comber’s stump coffee tables to use in the Poseleys’ living room alongside the couple’s petrified wood tables from their former California home. Serendipitously, Tara had also come across Comber’s work when driving past Provide Design Gallery, a Vancouver shop supporting local talent: a massive matte-white tree in the window caught her eye and she jumped out of her car to inquire about it. Comber’s tree—part of his Sentinel series—now resides in their home full time.

Trees are what typically bring the family together over the holidays, too. “We always wait for the boys to come home to pick out our Christmas tree,” says Tara. “Even if they can’t get home until the week before Christmas, we still always do it together.” Which can sometimes mean pickings are slim. “We usually walk around for a long time with everyone disagreeing until we come to a consensus,” laughs Chris.

But everybody came to consensus on the Charlie Brown-esque hemlock saplings that fit in three of Comber’s sculptural vessels. “The boys just thought this was such a cool idea for Christmas this year—it speaks to the fluidity of this family and how much we love art,” says Tara. The vessels, crafted out of beechwood, serve as a foundation for the festive installation of greenery styled by Comber’s partner, multidisciplinary artist Susan MacDonald. “If you were to ask a child to build a tree trunk out of wood, I imagined this is how it would look,” says Comber of the irregular sections of wood glued together at the base. He painted the containers white to make them feel dreamy—like what a child’s imagination would conjure. “They’re not flush, some edges are proud and they’re basically put together like Lego bricks—except Lego goes together nicely and these aren’t like that.”

Ross was also inspired by the artist’s piles of alder segments, which are kept at the ready in bins and boxes at Comber’s studio for whenever inspiration strikes. The designer carted them back to her studio to fashion them with copper wire to better hang them delicately from each branch. Miniature lights were then woven throughout the trees, which, when lit up, evoke a magical Dr. Suess vibe. 

Comber’s iconic wooden spheres also serve as part art installation and part riff on a classic holiday ornament. The biggest—200-pound sculptures crafted from Port Orford cedar—required a team with a very sturdy dolly to install, but once the holidays wrap up, they can be moved outdoors. “With the Sphere, there’s no top or bottom or sides—there’s no hierarchy,” says Comber. “In our everyday lives, we tend to compare and classify, but in nature we don’t question—we ultimately feel how it enters our bodies through our nose, our ears, and how it bypasses our brain and goes into our soul.”

While the spheres invite quiet contemplation, the kitchen’s dramatic 14-foot Cristallo quartzite island serves as epicentre for lively entertaining. “Because we didn’t grow up in Vancouver, our house is filled with friends and other families at Christmas,” says Tara. Holiday dinners have ranged from Mediterranean to vegan depending on who lands on their doorstep.

While this classic home has been all about forging new rites and rituals, some traditions remain untouched. Come Christmas morning, wherever they are, Chris always prepares a mountain of eggs, bacon and pancakes for the four of them—and this year will be no different. But moving forward, these serene Christmas mornings will now be spent in this forever house—a home with purpose, clarity and a little Canadian maple syrup.