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He spends supercharged days overseeing movie studios, television stations, publishing houses, national and international newspapers, magazines, and Internet entities as the president and COO of one of the world's biggest media companies, but when it came to his summer house, he chose to not think big. His ideal was something modestly scaled and vernacular—as opposed to, let's say, one of those McMansionized versions of a beach house that could pass for a country club. "Emotionally," the wife explains, "the place that my husband and I are most attached to is Martha's Vineyard, where his family had an old fishing-camp-type cottage. We spent our honeymoon there, and for the following 30 summers we were like gypsies, renting in all these great spots all over the island."

At some point the couple began a quest for a house of their own, but as hard and as long as they looked, they could never find exactly the right one. What they eventually did succeed in finding was a picture-perfect property, complete with hills and dales, dark woods and effulgent fields, rolling meadows and long reaches of exceptionally precious seashore. The far-flung farm that their eight acres sit on was developed in the late 19th century as "a civil wilderness—that is, spacious possessions tamed to comfort but not made artificial," in the memorable words of its founder. The building sites—designated by metal stakes driven into the ground— were all selected with an eye to ensuring in perpetuity that no house on the 2,000-acre expanse could be seen from any other. "According to the bylaws, we're lessees until the year 3020—we figured that should do it," the wife assesses with a smile.

The couple's own dwelling had had to be built on one of those archaic old stakes. "They wanted it to be recessive in respect to the landscape," says architect Oscar Shamamian, pointing out how seamlessly the gray shingle and dark-green trim blend into a bluff a hundred feet over the ocean. It is, he goes on, "a house with additive massing." In other words, a structure made of many—in this case, five easy—pieces, which places it firmly in the tradition of older coastal homes that have been added on to incrementally.

The 4,500 square feet exude a cottagelike quality: snug, intimate even, yet never cramped. The house, in fact, feels fitted.

Inside, the 4,500 square feet exude a cottagelike quality: snug, intimate even, yet never cramped. The house, in fact, feels fitted, having been designed like a ship in places (the library especially, with its mahogany walls and domed ceiling, recalls the well-appointed stateroom of an ocean liner). Designer Michael S. Smith has eloquently bolstered the theme of the architecture with an apposite selection of furniture and paintings. "I wanted it to be, you know, a little bit Yankee, kind of barebones— not a white-linen-pants sort of place. Because that's the vibe: The clients are not people who have luncheon parties. They wouldn't even have a pool—when you stay with them, they march you right into the freezing-cold ocean and make you go for a swim. They make you go kayaking and canoeing on the big pond behind the house. They make you go on four-hour bike rides. They make you pick blueberries for cobbler for dinner, or for morning cereal. I mean, it's not just a vacation, it's a hazing," he laughs. "You fall into bed at night so exhausted—it's summer camp every day there."

And "old-fashioned summery" is how he describes the aesthetic. There are reclaimed floors "for a sense of history," and plaster walls with sand mixed in "for softness." The palette mirrors "the colors that surround you in nature": off-white, pale green, luminous blue... And the furniture is nothing if not "approachable." The pair of "supercomfortable" pillowback sofas in the living room are of hemp woven to simulate a slight ripple, then washed with a patina-imparting tea dye ("The unbelievable power of Michael's decorating is the way he just keeps layering," the wife insists). Smith prides himself on not having over-restored any of the early American pieces, such as the fine Queen Anne curly-maple chest of drawers in the entrance hall. And on having provided, for underfoot, a magnificent Tabriz and a wonderful Sultanabad, not to mention the vintage hooked and needlepoint rugs in the three college-age children's jewel-box rooms.

The couple had been collecting work by local artists—"scenes that say Martha's Vineyard to us"—since they first set spellbound foot on the island. And now for this house they began gathering theorem paintings of flowers and fruit, and accumulating as well quite a nautical trove. "What could be more appropriate than pictures of ships," Smith enthuses, "given the island's big whaling and fishing history?" The designer adds that as he was hanging the paintings and installing the furniture, a neighbor on the farm dropped by: "She commented to me, It's nice that they have such beautiful family things,' and I was thrilled because it should all look inherited." The wife volunteers that the house itself has been mistaken for one of the earliest places on the property, and "to us, that's the ultimate compliment."

Oscar Shamamian and Michael S. Smith may have given their clients the house, but it is Bill Blass who could be credited with giving them the world—at least in the form of the four king-size Continental circa 1750 wall maps on the second-floor landing. Engraved and hand-colored with such compatible elements as ships under sail, they were acquired at the 2003 Sotheby's auction of Blass's belongings. Also from that celebrated estate sale came several pieces of pottery: a white-glazed water jug the size of a trash can that the wife has relegated to the mudroom ("We tend to keep our beach flip-flops in it") and some "big, hunky pitchers— teal, brown and turquoise" ("I go to the farmers' market right up the road and bring home these beautiful bouquets of Vineyard flowers and just plop them in").

The husband and wife both like to cook. "A white kitchen is a beautiful idea," Smith admits, "but it's just become too much of a feminine cliché for every house that's within five miles of a beach. The clients preferred to go in the direction of that sort of severity and real rustic quality that the Vineyard has." Thus black appliances and dark-green tiles and cabinets.

The wife confides, "My husband, who doesn't like air-conditioning, was a big nut about having the right crosscurrents in the master bedroom. He kept after Oscar to come up with a way to have air coming in on three sides." And now, lo and behold, when summer days blaze up, there are breezes within as well as without.