“I find architecture to be quite inspiring,” says designer Darryl Carter, who cites the exquisite tension between classical and modern in Washington, D.C. — specifically, the juxtaposition of John Russell Pope’s West Building and I.M. Pei’s East Building at the National Gallery of Art — as an influence on his design work there. This tension is in evidence in the living room of a client’s Georgian Revival home in McLean, Virginia. “The client is well-traveled, which informed the modern continental vocabulary,” says Carter, who centered the room’s design on chairs he procured from 1stDibs: a pair of 1930s French bergères with curving carved-fruitwood frames and cabriole legs and a pair of circa 1900 Venetian baroque-style shell chairs with dolphin-shaped arms. The latter are “unexpected,” Carter says, “given the at-large modern vocabulary of the room.” Meant to accommodate both intimate and large gatherings, the room also contains a rectilinear contemporary sofa upholstered in a neutral Kravet linen, a custom cantilevered concrete and white-painted-wood coffee table and a plaster equestrian sculpture. The blend perfectly expresses what Carter describes as the essence of his firm’s projects: “The mix of the modern and the antique in a monochrome palette.”