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Fun house

Barbara Vogelsang's Brookline home is a place of whimsical art.

When Barbara and Ingo Vogelsang bought their 1906 stucco house in Brookline 20 years ago, it was gray inside and out. It's not gray anymore. The outside is lemon yellow, and there's a 1950s yellow Cadillac painted on the garage door. The cutout people on the front and side porches, made of painted wood, give only a hint of the carnival inside.

Barbara Vogelsang is an artist and a former dress designer. She uses her house as a studio and a canvas. Her husband is a professor of economics at Boston University. Both are originally from Germany, and Barbara Vogelsang says her house represents her way of integrating America into her life. Within the 17-room classic Arts and Crafts-style house, she has created a fantasy world where it's no more shocking to see a life-size cow standing next to the bar on the sun porch than it is to see a naked mannequin discreetly covered with a towel lounging in a bathtub on the second floor. "I'm like that crazy friend you keep in the attic," she says. "My house is my art, and I really have put my soul in here."

On the front porch next to the mailbox, a wood cutout of a seated woman in a long dress greets you; a scarf is tied around her head, and a basket of flowers lies primly in her lap. "She's waiting for the mail," says Vogelsang mischievously. On the side porch is what looks like a workman fixing the overhang. This wood silhouette is so realistic that it once fooled the police into thinking a prowler was on the loose.

Inside the house, the vestibule sets a playful tone. Hanging from an 1899 coat rack is a kimono of handmade paper that Vogelsang pressed herself in her basement workshop. Next to the kimono hang a giant paper key and a Saturday Evening Post magazine made out of fabric. It would be an understatement to call this house eclectic. Each room is a carefully planned explosion of color, antiques, and art.

In the oak-walled 40-foot-long living room, an 18th-century fainting couch sits in front of a quilted cactus that Vogelsang made of hand-painted silk. Nearby stands a 1920 Dorothy Eaton hand-painted screen that depicts golfers against green grass. The room also holds two other distinctive Vogelsang pieces. In one corner, at an antique writing desk, lounges a silk sculpture of an 1890s woman dressed in a long skirt and holding a parasol, her eyes made of flowers. In another corner is a mannequin, a young boy dressed in a sailor suit, who is pushing an antique baby carriage.

Two mustard faux marble columns frame the dining room entrance. Vogelsang bought them from the London department store Biba when it closed in the 1970s. Red is the dominant color in this room. A 1920 Cartier jewelry display case trimmed in red glass complements a 1940s jukebox also trimmed in a luminescent red. In front of the fireplace, two red leather chairs sit next to a table that Vogelsang covered in a patchwork of silk. The room also holds two folding chairs, one covered in leopard fur, the other in patchwork silk. Are they furniture or are they sculptures? Only Vogelsang knows for sure.

In the butler's pantry, Vogelsang introduces her "housewife," a chair covered with a red Naugahyde apron, a red telephone dangling from its back. A fake $5,000 bill is tucked in the apron. "So she wouldn't have to keep asking for money," Vogelsang says.

The ultramodern kitchen, recently redone, is punctuated with cobalt-blue cabinets and a cloud sculpture hanging from the ceiling. In the kitchen's dining area, Vogelsang created a fantasy ice cream parlor on a sideboard: wax ice cream sundaes and pumps for chocolate sauce. Off the kitchen, a den was turned into a 1950s beauty parlor. A cotton-candy pink leather couch sits near two old-fashioned helmet hair dryers. A sign above the TV says, "We recommend Helene Curtis cold waves."

The first-floor sun porch, Vogelsang's homage to California, is perhaps her favorite room. This is where the cow stands, next to a mannequin in a Hawaiian shirt lounging under a silk cherry tree with quilted leaves. Here, Vogelsang created a grass bed on which lies a handmade paper woman in a grass skirt. And a huge bird sculpture, made out of maps and globes and newspaper, hangs from the ceiling.

The second floor reveals the bread-and-butter of her art business: silk floral arrangements. A sun room off the master bedroom is filled with arrangements in vases, with prices ranging from $100 to $500. Every November, Vogelsang invites about 50 people to an open house. It's a chance to show off her work and her house and perhaps make a few sales, and it seems to reflect her penchant for combining business and pleasure. "Life," she says, "should be as much fun as you can have."