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Aging gracefully

At 275 years old, this Ipswich home is still so comfortable even the ghost won't leave.

It's a sure sign of a house's enduring appeal when past occupants, particularly deceased ones, can't stay away. Periodic visitations to the Baker Sutton house by its resident ghost - a woman wrapped in a Colonial-era hooded cloak - are evidence of such charms.

The latest sighting occurred in 1983, soon after the current owners, Joan Richards and her husband, Harry Zeltzer, moved into the 1725 Ipswich saltbox. Richards reports that she had awakened in the night and saw the ghost in a rocking chair beside the keeping room fireplace. "I felt that she was welcoming us to the house, that she was very fond of it and wanted to make sure we were, too."

Ghosts aside, the couple's approach to their New England antique, named for two early commercial occupants, is to pay homage to its past while nudging it into the present. The two-story clapboard dwelling is a marriage of elements from the earliest periods of Colonial architecture down to the 20th century. Built during the transition from the rustic first period of Colonial architecture to the classical Georgian period, the house has the first period's steeply pitched and gabled roof, central chimney and staircase, and lean-to extension in back. The symmetrical double-hung windows belong to the Georgian period, and the front doorway, with its transom windows and arched pediment, wasn't added till the 1960s.

As surely as architecture reveals the history of a house, furnishings tell the occupants' story. The Richards-Zeltzer collection is a testament to their life, travels, and good works. The couple married in 1983, the year they bought the house. Zeltzer is a semiretired optometrist, an inventor, a sculptor, and president-elect of Volunteer Optometric Services to Humanity, an organization that provides Third World nations with eye care. Richards is a nurse-midwife who frequently accompanies Zeltzer on global missions, and she is also an equestrian.

Together, they operate the Baker Sutton House antiques shop from their Ipswich property. "The wonderful thing about having an antiques shop is the way it makes the house evolve, like a garden," says Richards. "We try things out, move them around. If they don't work, back they go to the shop."

The couple mix old pieces with newer ones, creating rooms that look thoroughly lived in, in the best sense - full of sensory and aesthetic engagement. Fires crackle; the scent of smoke, flowers, and beeswax candles hangs in the air; paintings and memorabilia line walls; silk pillows and fleecy sheepskin throws cushion sofas and chairs. Every nook showcases a collection. In the pine-paneled living room, a built-in corner cupboard displays Minton china and Famille Rose porcelain.

The keeping room connects the living and dining rooms with the kitchen. "We hibernate here during the winter," says Richards.

The snug kitchen is filled to the rafters with pottery, paintings, and folk art. A still life by their friend Al Czerepak is joined by Navajo wedding baskets, a stained-glass rooster crafted by Zeltzer, and religious artifacts: "santos" figures (wooden carvings of saints) acquired in Latin America, menorahs, and paintings of rabbis.

The couple's respect for the past and passion for collecting, or "treasure hunting," as they call it, is leavened by affection and humor. They even name their paintings - one portrait is Dolly, another The Poor Man's Mona Lisa. But for them, what's most important is preserving their home for future generations. As Richards says: "The house has a history, a spirit. We're only caretakers."