
DATE: Sunday, April 13, 1997                TAG: 9704120063

SECTION: HOME                    PAGE: G2   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY JO-ANN CLEGG, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:   70 lines

ECLECTIC COLLECTION FILLS COTTAGEWHIMSICAL ART, BEACHCOMBERS' TREASURES AND FAMILY DISCARDS FURNISH OCEANFRONT RETREAT.

THE HOUSE AT 5004 Oceanfront in Virginia Beach is Bill and Shirlie Camp's answer to Campobello and Hyannisport. A wonderful family kind of oceanside place, the large four-bedroom cottage has been the getaway for four generations of Franklin's William Camp family.

``My in-laws built it in 1959, the year before my youngest child was born. We tell her she spent her first summer here,'' Shirlie Camp said. These days it's her grandchildren who romp on the beach and run in for cookies and lemonade.

Filled with whimsical art, beachcombers' treasures and family discards, it's the kind of home that shows shows clearly its residents' joy in life and family.

``The decorations are an eclectic gathering for children and dogs,'' Camp said with a smile. ``There's not much here that didn't come from my home, my husband's or one of my daughter's.''

Eclectic they may be. But skillful mixing by Shirlie Camp, an artist and sculptor, has produced an interior style as aesthetically pleasing as it is warm and comfortable.

Nowhere is her skill more evident than in the brightly colored paintings collected by the senior Camps during Caribbean travels over the years.

``They'd buy them everywhere, even from artists on street corners, then bring them back,'' Camp said. She's framed dozens of the little watercolors and grouped them throughout the house to provide fanciful touches of color against the cypress and juniper paneling.

Some of the furnishings were made by Shirlie Camp's father, George Steinbach, now 89 and an accomplished woodworker. One such piece, a large square coffee table in the sun room, is painted white and trimmed with flowers and vines painted by Camp.

Her father wasn't pleased with his own finished work. ``It has a crack in it,'' he complained of the split which runs the length of the piece. Camp wouldn't let him repair it. ``I want the crack there,'' she told him.

And then there are Shirlie Camp's ``finds'': the perfect little chest from a Southside antique shop, a brightly colored wooden parrot she had made into a lamp, the wonderful 1940s hobnail coverlets on a pair of twin beds that came from a family attic. ``There's nothing here that doesn't have a story behind it,'' she said.

Some are the kind of stories that any homemaker could tell, others are as unique to the Camp clan as Shirlie Camp's style of decorating. ``That,'' she said as she pointed to the cornice above a living room window, ``is where the raccoon spent most of his time.''

Raccoon? In the living room? He was there because he wanted to be, Camp explained. ``It was back when my children were young. He spent most of the summer up there. I can still see him with his tail and one paw hanging down, perched on the cornice watching television with them.''

The big cottage on the oceanfront is, as Shirlie Camp made clear, a place where children, dogs and any other living creature can feel at home. ILLUSTRATION: Photo

CHARLIE MEADS/The Virginian-Pilot

The dining room of Bill and Shirlie Camp's cottage at Virginia Beach

reflects their eclectic tastes.

Graphic

WANT TO GO?

What: William and Shirlie Camp cottage, one of six homes on the

tour sponsored by Virginia Beach Garden Club

Where: 5004 Oceanfront, Virginia Beach

When: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Tuesday, April 22

How much: $4 single house; $12 for all six