Robyn Glaser settles down on the dock and seems lost in contemplation of the lake in front of her country retreat. The silence is only broken by the sounds of birds in flight. On the opposite shore, the trees sway in the breeze. “I’m a city girl, but I love the water,” says Robyn, “and I love the serenity here.” A prop stylist who has created some of the most beautiful and inventive sets for advertising photography, Robyn has lived all her life in New York City. By chance, she came upon a small A-frame house by a lake in Pennsylvania, just 70 miles out of the city, and promptly fell in love with it. The rural setting provided the perfect escape from her hectic city life. Ironically, she later found out the area had once been a popular hideout for New York gangsters.

The three-bedroom house was built in the 1970s, the period Robyn most identifies with since it reminds her of all the fabulous interiors of friends’ places while growing up in New York City. So despite the fact that it was filled with colonial furniture and had a gun rack, Robyn could see the potential and knew exactly what to do. Apart from removing the old stuccoed ceilings, she kept the house more or less the same structurally.