DESIGNER He decks the halls with abandon

Gregory Perry prepares for Christmas decorating all year.
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
While most of us are tossing out rumpled wrappings and sweeping up gingerbread crumbs, Gregory Perry is planning his decorations for next Christmas.
For Perry, decking the halls is a passion, a never-ending quest for ideas, bargains and unusual items. "I shop for Christmas year-round," he said. "I'm the first one there (in the stores) after Christmas."
Perry is a high school marketing teacher in Ohio who also operates a part-time interior decorating business, Re-Design. Although he deals primarily in affordable decor and landscaping, at this time of year, he focuses on holiday decorating, for both his own house and the homes of his clients.
Perry's love for holiday decorating goes back to childhood. He was just 4 or 5, he recalled, when his mother first let him dig out his family's Christmas things and start decorating around October.
He still starts early. Work on his home started the first week of October, so he could finish in time to turn his attention to his clients' houses.
Perry's signature look is lush, elegant and flirting with excess. Consider his directions for creating a mantel decoration like the one over his fireplace: "When it falls off the mantel," he said with a laugh, "then you know you've gone too far."
Nearly every room of his house bears the mark of his holiday creativity, and each has its own color scheme. His living room decorations, for example, are primarily silver and gold. The tree in the adjoining solarium is dressed in the traditional red, white and green, but the colors come from unexpected sources such as red tulips and roses, green ivy and white amaryllis.
Taking cues
At the Pam and Les Connolly's house in Akron, Perry took his cues from the couple's artwork. A multicolored harlequin look in the living room was inspired by a colorful still life of a Provencal table with a diamond-pattern tablecloth; a surprising sunflower theme in the family room came from the Connollys' oversized sunflower print.
One of the most commanding elements in the family room is an enormous, cascading arrangement over the fireplace, made up of a grapevine garland, artificial cedar, silk vines, glittered gold ferns, grapevine coils, ornaments and, of course, artificial sunflowers. More sunflowers sprout along with other leftover floral materials from a jug on the hearth, and a single glass sunflower on the coffee table serves as what Pam Connolly called the exclamation point.
The somewhat summery look nevertheless blends easily with the tree, dressed mostly in blue and green with accents such as beaded garland, winterberry, chartreuse nylon ribbon, blue grapes and white flowers including amaryllis, Casa Blanca lilies and delphiniums. Curly willow branches sprout from the top third of the tree like sun rays.
Perry's favorite element in the house -- "the wow factor," in his words -- is the front entry. He draped the staircase banister in evergreen garland studded with white lights, beads, winterberry and glittered green pears, then added the punch of clusters of artificial red tulips. A console table in front of the stairs continues the theme with a pen-and-ink angel drawing Perry created, gold pears, a red rose topiary and a small tree covered in gold calla lilies, snowball lights, poinsettias with lighted centers, miniature violins, grapes and berries.
Unexpected elements
The hallmark of Perry's decorating is the use of unexpected elements, such as the candlestick lamps and zebra feathers he used to adorn a tree just off his master bedroom.
Another of his signature looks is the use of what he called vignettes to top his trees -- essentially oversized floral arrangements that cascade down from the tops of the artificial evergreens. Perry attaches the topper first before he decorates the rest of a tree..
Although he relishes the unusual, he believes there also should be a place in the home for family heirlooms and the things you've collected over the years..