Spaces July 2017

RAWBEAUTY

TEASING THE EDGES

French Art de Vivre

Courchevel. Modular bed in leather or fabric, design Philippe Bouix. Dolphin. Armchair, design Cédric Ragot. Wander. Floor lamp, design Cristián Mohaded. Manufactured in Europe

Kitchens for those who want that ‘just right’ feeling.

LET THE OUTDOORS IN

Tour three different home designs at Blu Homes’ new Model Home Village

INTERIOR DESIGN BY ROBERT FEDERIGHI

CARPET - HARDWOOD - CUSTOM AREA RUGS - VINYL -

CONTENTS

SPACES SUMMER/FALL 2017

FEATURES

64 CONVERSATIONS WITH ART Midcentury art and design at gallerist Francis Mill’s S.F. loft. By Zahid Sardar; photography by David Duncan Livingston

74 WILD THINGS

Jeff and Tray Schlarb mix shapes, colors and textures in their midcentury Sea Cliff home. By Zahid Sardar

Photography by Aubrie Pick

82 ROCK STEADY

A San Rafael Craftsman gets a rock-and-roll makeover.

By Eva Hagberg Fisher

Photography by Adza

90 THE REAL DEAL

Solid wood, steel and glass transform an artist’s warehouse home. By Zahid Sardar

Photography by Matthew Millman

98 FADING INTO BLACK

The bright white look is out at this historic Ross estate. By Sarah Lynch; photography by David Duncan Livingston

106 COUNTRY COLORS

A Napa designer debuts his best work at home. By Zahid Sardar

Photography by Mariko Reed

116 THE TROPICS IN CALIFORNIA

A lush hillside wonderland in Kentfield. By Reed Wright; photography by Suzanne Becker Bronk

ON THE COVER

Artist Willem Racké worked with architect Luke Ogrydziak to transform his two-story SoMa loft.

Image: Aaron LEITZ

CONTENTS SUMMER/FALL 2017

PERCH LIGHT BRANCH

LED

DEPARTMENTS

26 EDITOR’S WELCOME

28 CONTRIBUTORS

30 LETTERS

33 DESIGN SPOT Design in unlikely places. By Zahid Sardar

39 GALLERY Beautiful objects for the home. Edited by Lisa Boquiren

51 FOCUS A sculptor’s seminal art for playgrounds. By Zahid Sardar

55 MAKERS A Sausalito designer redefines tile. By Reed Wright

59 VOICES Bringing European style to the most important room in the house. By Laura Hilgers

120 PORTFOLIO Ben Frombgen designs the best seats in the house. By Zahid Sardar

124 MAKEOVER Architect Julie Dowling rescues dilapidated stables in Marin. By Reed Wright

128 LANDING Lost and found in India. By Zahid Sardar

XL

ISAMU

137 IN BLOOM Flower power rules the summer. By Reed Wright

140 RESOURCES A guide to finding what’s shown in this issue.

146 REAR WINDOW

The towers of San Francisco. By Kasia Pawlowska

Clockwise from top left: BCOOPERATIVE, San Francisco designer Ben Frombgen makes custom seating for places like the Alembic. bcooperative.com

LIGHT, designer Umut Yamac’s pendant lamp for Moooi. About $4,000. moooi.com

DECEMBER LOUNGE CHAIR, by Jasper Morrison & Wataru Kumano for Nikari. $1,719 as shown. brightonpresidio.com

NOGUCHI, playground equipment for Ala Moana Park, Hawaii, c. 1940. sfmoma.org

CLÉ TILE, porcelain tiles from master craftsman Boris Aldridge. cletile.com

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Zahid Sardar

EDITORIAL

MANAGING EDITOR

Daniel Jewett

EXECUTIVE EDITOR

Mimi Towle

GALLERY EDITOR

Lisa Boquiren

ASSOCIATE EDITOR

Kasia Pawlowska

SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER

Leela Lindner

COPY EDITOR

Cynthia Rubin

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Eva Hagberg, Laura Hilgers, Sarah Lynch, Reed Wright

ART

ART DIRECTOR

Victor Maze

PRODUCTION MANAGER

Alex French

CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS

Adza Aubry, Suzanne Becker Bronk, David Duncan Livingston, Matthew Millman, Aubrie Pick, Mariko Reed, Cesar Rubio, Brett Wickens, Jack Wolford

ADMINISTRATION / WEB

CONTROLLER

Maeve Walsh

WEB/IT MANAGER

Peter Thomas

DIGITAL MARKETING ASSOCIATE

Max Weinberg

OFFICE MANAGER

Kirstie Martinelli

PUBLISHER

Nikki Wood

ADVERTISING

ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER

Debra Hershon ext 120 | dhershon@marinmagazine.com

ADVERTISING DIRECTOR

Michele Geoffrion Johnson ext 110 | mjohnson@marinmagazine.com

SENIOR ACCOUNT MANAGERS

Leah Bronson ext 109 | lbronson@marinmagazine.com

Lesley Cesare ext 113 | lcesare@marinmagazine.com

ACCOUNT MANAGERS

Dana Horner ext 107 | dhorner@marinmagazine.com

Kirstie Martinelli ext 100 | kmartinelli@marinmagazine.com

ADVERTISING ART DIRECTOR

Alex French

REGIONAL SALES OFFICES

WINE COUNTRY

Lesley Cesare lcesare@marinmagazine.com

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

Leah Bronson lbronson@marinmagazine.com

NEW YORK

Karen Couture, Couture Marketing 917.821.4429

READER SERVICES

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Volume 2, Issue 2. SPACES is published in Marin County by Marin Magazine, Inc . All rights reserved. Copyright©2017. Reproduction of SPACES content is prohibited without the expressed, written consent of Marin Magazine Unsolicited materials cannot be returned. SPACES reserves the right to refuse to publish any advertisement deemed detrimental to the best interests of the community or that is in questionable taste. SPACES is mailed as a supplement to Marin Magazine to select homes and businesses in the Bay Area. SPACES is published biannually by Marin Magazine, One Harbor Drive, Suite 208, Sausalito, CA 94965.

AMERICAN ARCHITECT FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT was born 150 years ago, and in the course of his seven-decade career became an engine of design innovation by breaking from Western canons and borrowing ideas from around the world. His mosque-like Marin County Civic Center, completed after he died in 1959, is one futurist example. Architects and designers who followed in his wake learned what he taught from experience: that new ideas lie beyond the edge of prescribed good taste.

That also became the maxim of innovators like Michael Taylor, who led a midcentury California design movement that mixed the sacred

— precious neoclassical antiques, expensive marbles and exquisite fabrics — with the profane, such as driftwood, boulders and burlap, and made decorative design history.

This issue is dedicated to the latest crop of eclectic Bay Area designers — nearly all of whom came to the profession by chance, without design school rules — who eschew whitewalled modernism to celebrate the raw beauty of concrete, weathered textures and surprising color palettes.

In San Francisco, trompe l’oeil artist Willem Racké teams up with Princeton-trained architect Luke Ogrydziak to transform a former factory

turned live-work space in SoMa; designer Jeff Schlarb, a business major who wandered, via a home staging business, into full-time decoration, collaborates with his wife, Tray, on the design of their oddly shaped Sea Cliff home; Francis Mill, a prominent art gallerist who is at heart also an interior designer, teams up with Los Angeles designer Stephan Jones in the remaking of his loft apartment within a 1930s warehouse in SoMa; in St. Helena, retired lawyer David McMullen makes his design debut with the transformation of a modern cottage that has a garden by San Francisco landscape architect Katherine Webster; in Marin, self-taught Israeli designer Yaél Putterman showcases black walls within a classic turn-of-the-century interior in wooded Ross; interior designer Holly Kopman juxtaposed a jazzy palette of ethnic patterns and bold colors against a wood-lined Arts and Crafts interior in San Rafael; and Green Gulch–influenced landscape designer Tim O’Shea of Green 17 brought the tropics to a hillside garden in Kentfield.

Also in this issue, in Design Spot, Gallery and other sections, look for global strains: the Japanese-American designer Isamu Noguchi is the focus of a show at SFMOMA that highlights his groundbreaking playgrounds that were built mainly in Japan; in India we landed at Maitreyi, an Ayurveda and meditation retreat that revives the magnetic lure of ancient vastu shastra design, India’s feng shui; in Nicasio, architect Julie Dowling echoes a South African riding club at the horse ranch she co-founded; Deborah Osburn’s Sausalito-based Clé Tile company woos international designers who make new kinds of tile; Waterworks founder Barbara Sallick extols the virtues of the European bath; San Francisco purveyor Sue Fisher King and Zeterre Landscape Architecture bring us Parisian tableware and exotic flowering plants for the garden; and at the Roche Bobois showroom in San Francisco, avant-garde French designs, including uncommonly roomy leather sofas like the one shown on this page, abound. We hope you enjoy the mélange.

ZAHID SARDAR EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, SPACES

IMAGES

ADZA AUBRY

“Rock Steady” (p. 82)

Adza Aubry was a portrait photographer before she began to shoot interiors. Based in the Peninsula, she continues to work on a variety of subjects all across the Bay Area. Her images have appeared locally in print and online publications such as the San Francisco Chronicle and, in Europe, The Independent and Le Journal du Dimanche.

CESAR RUBIO

“In Bloom” (p. 137)

Cesar Rubio, a San Francisco–based photographer, has been documenting the work of architects and designers for more than 25 years, using an approach informed by his early studio work and a lifelong love of motion pictures. His photos have appeared in Architectural Record, Interior Design, Metropolis, Contract and The New York Times

MATTHEW MILLMAN

“The Real Deal” (p. 90)

For the past 20 years, Matthew Millman has been photographing architecture and interior design in the West. His work has appeared in a wide range of publications, including The New York Times, Dwell, Architectural Digest, Elle Decor, Vogue and more. Millman also photographed the books West Coast Modern and Art House.

MARIKO REED

“Country Colors” (p. 106)

Mariko Reed is a San Francisco architectural photographer who was born in Honolulu. The daughter of a general contractor and a fashion executive, she brings a unique sensibility to her photographs. At photography school she discovered she liked working with natural light to fully reflect the feeling of a space.

SUZANNE BECKER BRONK

“The Tropics in California” (p. 116)

Wine country fine art photographer Suzanne Becker Bronk is inspired by light, shadow, texture and unexpected juxtapositions. Bronk’s photographs have appeared in many publications, including The New York Times and Napa Valley Life. Her fine art work is collected by the di Rosa Foundation, many wineries and private patrons.

WORDS

EVA HAGBERG FISHER

“Rock Steady” (p. 82)

Eva Hagberg Fisher is a writer, critic and scholar. An architecture graduate of Princeton University and UC Berkeley, she is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Berkeley. She is also the author of two architecture books.

(p. 64); “Fading Into Black” (p. 98)

A native of the Bay Area, David Duncan Livingston has been photographing for interior designers, architects, magazines and books for many years. He was the sole photographer for more than five interior design books, including San Francisco Style and California Country Style

LISA BOQUIREN  Gallery (p. 39)

Marin-based editor and writer Lisa Boquiren, who was on the steering committee for the American Institute of Architects National Convention, is a design and architecture aficionada.

AUBRIE PICK

“Wild Things” (p. 74); Editor’s Welcome (p. 26)

Aubrie Pick is a San Francisco food, lifestyle and interiors photographer. She created images for forthcoming cookbooks by Luisa Weiss, Charlotte Druckman and star chef Guy Fieri. You can also find Pick’s photographs in Chrissy Teigen’s new cookbook Cravings: Recipes for All the Food You Want to Eat

SARAH LYNCH

“Fading Into Black” (p. 98)

Sarah Lynch is a writer and magazine editor who was for seven years the editor-in-chief of California Home+Design magazine. She has also authored nine interior design books.

BRETT WICKENS

Makeover (p. 124)

Photographer Brett Wickens began his career designing album covers for artists such as Peter Gabriel, New Order and George Michael. Among many other brand identities, he designed the iconic logo type for HBO’s The Sopranos . His anthology SEEN: Photography 2009-2016 , will be published in 2017.

LAURA HILGERS

Voices (p. 59)

Laura Hilgers, a regular contributor to Marin Magazine, is a Bay Area writer whose work has appeared in O, Sports Illustrated, Vogue and other publications. She enjoys tackling the hiking trails of Marin.

READERS RESPOND TO THE WINTER/SPRING 2017 ISSUE

Congratulations on another great issue of SPACES Thanks for showcasing the region’s most creative modernists, including Peter Pfau and Cass Calder Smith, with whom my construction crew and I worked on the Glen Park project (“Outside the Box,” January 2017).

Victor Mezhvinsky, MT Develoment, San Francisco

Thank you so much for the sensitivity and intelligence you brought to the project of representing my home (“A Painter’s Place,” January 2017) in SPACES magazine. Equally, the magazine was terrific: each photograph beautifully composed, each article well-crafted, clearly written and highly considered — such a rare pleasure.

Chris Brown, Berkeley

A friend dropped off an issue of SPACES last week at my office: what a beautiful magazine — lots of great ideas and interesting content. The Gallery section was really well done, and I especially enjoyed the excellent story on the Glen Park home. Overall, a nice mix of content.

Don Donoughe, Donoughe Design, San Mateo

Thank you for debuting our new A11 table among other groovy new products (Gallery, January 2017)! I enjoyed seeing work from my friends Ted Boerner and Stefan Gulassa too. Great job, keep up the good work.

Gary Hutton, Gary Hutton Design, San Francisco

Cave tours and cheese pairings by appointment.

BY ZAHID SARDAR DESIGN SPOT

AT HOME IN THE WORLD

Design in unlikely places.

THERE’S A RICH TRADITION of still life painting and photography, but Detroit, Michigan, photographer Cynthia Greig’s Nature Morte and Representations series of photographs, represented by the March store in San Francisco, completely reinvents the genre. Greig whitewashes fruit in vessels and objects like toasters and teacups in her real-life compositions and then outlines them with charcoal and adds dark shadows on the tabletop surface before photographing each fascinating arrangement. The resulting still life limited-edition photographs look like highkey charcoal drawings on paper. Prices range from $1,150 to $7,000 per print. marchsf.com

DUTCH DESIGNER ALDO BAKKER created an elemental console table — two thick tapered tree trunk–like legs and a halved loglike surface — for the Danish firm Karakter that revives classic designs and sponsors exclusive new commissions. Bakker’s first Green Table used Japanese-style urushi lacquer over a wood-and–foam core; it took a year to make; a new 2017 version, the Brown Table, has an MDF and wood-veneer core with a less expensive sprayed-on matte lacquer finish. About $9,000. karakter-copenhagen.com

AUSTRIAN INTERIOR DESIGNER Claudia Juestel has revived a bit of her past at Adeeni Design Galerie, a new art and design store near San Francisco’s Union Square. It doubles as her business atelier and echoes the 20th-century modernism of architect/designer Josef Hoffmann, who co-founded the Wiener Werkstatte (Vienna Workshops). Like him, Juestel is a proponent of fine decorative arts and goods for the home, and she has curated vintage furniture, lighting and accessories from Europe; handcrafted jewelry by Michelle Nussbaumer of Ceylon et Cie in Dallas is displayed in ebonized cases. In Juestel’s high-ceilinged black-white-and-chartreuse space are also products designed by her, amid artworks by Bay Area artists. Stop by and score some coffee and Meinl chocolates for a taste of old Vienna. adeenidesigngroup.com

TEL AVIV– AND MILAN-BASED Design

Studio Joynout, led by designer Assaf Israel, introduced Daydream, a multifunctional seat inspired by the symbol for infinity, a new and unexpected chaise to sit, lounge and dream in. Daydream is wide enough for two, looks like a book stand, and has two relatively flat cushioned wood panels that slot together. Upholstered in Kvadrat fabric (available in 10 different colors); the head cushion is removable for cleaning. About $2,800. joynout.com

DAIKON , a new lighting brand launched by Pennsylvania designer Austin Tremellen, who was a motorbike machinist, is showcased at Jay Jeffers – The Store in San Francisco. Made of powder-coated mild steel, stainless steel or patinated brass square tubing and Edison-style filament bulbs, the pieces resemble art deco/ moderne pendant lights and sconces; one kinetic, many-armed chandelier, with pivot hinges and a ball-bearing mechanism, shape-shifts very easily. The Darko XL Pendant, above right, costs about $2,500. jayjeffers-thestore.com

FRENCH ARCHITECT JOSEPH DIRAND’s retro anodized-aluminum Phénix sconce also has art deco roots. Produced by Paris-based Ozone, it is available for $4,380 at Bright on Presidio in San Francisco. brightonpresidio.com

LONG BEFORE AIR TRAVEL , wide roads for armies led to centers of European civilization like Rome and well-heeled travelers that later trod them returned home with mementos. That is broadly the subject of a remarkable exhibition, All Roads Lead to Rome: 17th–19th-Century Architectural Souvenirs from the Collection of Piraneseum, mounted by SFO Museum, at the airport’s international departures level, through August 13. Curated by East Bay architects Lucia Howard and David Weingarten, it contains over 70 miniatures, reproductions of Piranesi’s architectural drawings (shown) and paintings of composite Roman views for 18th- and 19th-century tourists on a continental grand tour. A 19th-century inkwell is shaped like Rome’s Pantheon; Howard and Weingarten’s company Piraneseum also trades in these antiques that offer illuminating historical context. flysfo.com/museum/exhibitions; piraneseum.com

DUTCH DESIGNER Edward van Vliet’s Chalice pendant lamp produced by Moooi is a globular design, not shown, studded with flower-like crystal chalices with a copper finish that acts as reflection for LED lights. The lamps are composed of 24 or 48 chalices. moooi.com

BRITISH DESIGNER UMUT YAMAC , who is of Turkish descent, has recently unveiled the Perch Light Branch LED light, a lyrical pendant lamp for Moooi that resembles a bunch of birds perched on a line, shown on page 20. Made of steel and aluminum, it costs about $4,000, depending on the number of birds and the length of the rod. moooi.com

AMSTERDAM-BASED FRANK TJEPKEMA ’s Busk lamp for Moooi resembles fragile deep-sea creatures, anemones and corals that glow magically within the darkest depths of the ocean. Its globular form’s latticed structure — composed of multiple hexagonal components that are locked together with a round pin or busk like that of a corset — is also the electrical circuitry that powers 96 LED lights. moooi.com

founded by Junko Nagai and Kellye Denton, handpicked favorites at the Stockholm Furniture Fair that lean toward midcentury modern profiles with a new twist: for instance, the Triiio wood-and-glass coffee table designed in 1958 by Hans Bølling when he was just 27, for the 19th-century Danish firm Brdr. Krüger. The company has finally produced it in collaboration with the designer, using oak, beech and walnut bases. About $1,640, as shown. koncept22.com

THREE EXHIBITIONS at the San Francisco Fine Arts Museums explore controversial fashion and gender themes by juxtaposing international contemporary art with old European and American standards. The Summer of Love Experience: Art, Fashion, and Rock & Roll, through August 20 at the de Young museum, celebrates the 50th anniversary of that 1967 summer and its aesthetic legacy, with rock-and-roll concert posters, photographs,

light shows and hippie fashions. Sarah Lucas: Good Muse, from July 15 to September 17, is part of an initiative by the museums’ new director Max Hollein to highlight international contemporary art, within the Legion of Honor’s neoclassical galleries, that challenges stereotypes, just as Lucas’s edgy, sexually ambiguous conceptual works (above), set against Rodin’s distinctly male gaze, blur the line between male and female identities and power. Also at the Legion, Gods in Color: Polychromy in the Ancient World, from October 28 through January 7, reminds us that classical Grecian and Roman marble statuary was actually always brilliantly colored and gilded to represent garments that, when you think of it, were not unlike the extravagant costumes of 1960s hippies. famsf.org

SHOWN RECENTLY IN MILAN , Viennese designer Thomas Feichtner’s brand new Balance light for Italian manufacturer Karboxx does just that: the powder-coated tubular steel desk lamp, fitted with a single LED bulb at one end, can be easily tilted in two perfectly balanced positions, for a focused beam or ambient light. About $150. karboxx.com

WE ARE LUXURY

Luxury is bearing the hallmark of one of real estate’s most iconic names. Luxury is having not just one real estate professional working for you — but a global network of 88,000 affiliated sales agents in 3,000 offices in 49 countries and territories who can share the beauty of your home with an affluent audience worldwide. Luxury is knowing that you have mastered representation that sells more than $129.6 million in luxury homes every day.*

Dare to indulge.

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*Data based on closed and recorded transaction sides of homes sold for more than $1 million (USD$) or more as reported by the U.S. Coldwell Banker franchise system for the calendar year 2016.

©2017 Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage. All Rights Reserved. Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage fully supports the principles of the Fair Housing Act and the Equal Opportunity Act. Each Office is Independently Owned and Operated. Coldwell Banker, the Coldwell Banker Logo, Coldwell Banker Global Luxury and the Coldwell Banker Global Luxury logo are service marks are registered or pending registrations owned by Coldwell Banker Real Estate LLC. CalBRE License #01908304.

DESIGN SPOT

BARCELONA DESIGNER Eugeni Quitllet, a Philippe Starck protégé, grew up in sunny Ibiza, Spain. So naturally his new outdoor collection, Ibiza, which includes a polypropylene armchair, tables and a stackable chair, shown, for the Spanish firm Vondom, evokes the bent cane furniture he grew up with. Unveiled at the recent Milan furniture fair, it’s worth waiting for this year. vondom.com

BRITISH INDUSTRIAL DESIGNER

Hugo

Eccles of IDEO and Conran fame, a co-founder of Untitled Motorcycles (based in London and San Francisco) and a regular at the Handbuilt Motorcycle Show, recently won a 2017 Quail Design & Style Award for his UMC-023 Supernaturale motorbike. He has been turning heads since 2014 with his reconfigured motorbikes that start off as assembly-line favorites, then get stripped down and souped up by him into unique creations. The slightly older lightweight UMC-038 HyperScrambler, shown, is based on the heavier Ducati Scrambler 800. These wonders, which attract celebrities like Jay Leno, vary wildly in price depending on the design’s complexity. “I have eclectic tastes,” Eccles says, but whether classic or modern-looking, his bikes have stateof-the art technology. untitledmotorcycles.com

TWO BOOKS that contain examples of forgotten architectural splendors are also insider’s guides.

JOHN YEON: ARCHITECTURE (John Yeon: Landscape is a companion volume) contains essays, including some by editor Randy Gragg, who is also the director of the John Yeon Center. They present Yeon as the father of Northwest Regional Modernism in Portland; his timber buildings were once paired with work by Wright, Aalto and Mies at MoMa. The 1937 Watzek House, Yeon’s first and best-known structure, which Gragg manages and knows intimately, comes to life. Andrea Monfried Editions, 240 pages, $60.

CUBA: 101 BEAUTIFUL & NOSTALGIC PLACES TO VISIT book by longtime Cuba observer Michael Connors with sumptuous photographs by Jorge Laserna, will be both a lure to get you there and a portrait of a Cuba that may soon vanish with its reawakening. Rizzoli, 304 pages, $50.

THE STAY DAYBED by Nika Zupanc for British firm Sé, with a gold powder-coated metal frame uphol stered in a rose-colored velvet, recently unveiled at the Milan furniture fair, is perhaps the most seductive in a line that includes dining chairs, armchairs, barstools, benches, a sofa and a daybed. The day bed costs about $4,500. se-collections.com

NEW YORK ARCHITECT and designer Tarik

Currimbhoy has a new distraction: sculpture. His abstract pieces include small, two-foothigh polished cast-brass kinetic works that have a balanced pendulum movement; larger steel versions, often two stories high, fashioned out of mild steel, primed and then painted, don’t move like their smaller cousins, but seem to, as they twist and turn against the sky. An 18-foot-high $150,000 Twist or Tarana is installed in India; smaller, 20-inch-high cast or tooled brass editions, like the maquette shown, cost $10,000–$15,000 at the Long Sharp Gallery in New York. longsharpgallery.com

SAN FRANCISCO INTERIOR DESIGNER

Suzanne Tucker’s Riviera dining table, designed for Michael Taylor Designs, is a nod to her mentor Michael Taylor’s penchant for mixing 18th-century European furniture with California craft objects. The latticed, “open-weave” octagonal teak tabletop and cast concrete/resin base have a classic profile designed to be used outdoors; sold separately or, as shown, combined; about $10,500. michaeltaylordesigns.com n

EDITED BY LISA BOQUIREN GALLERY

DOTS, LINES & CROSSHATCHES

Designers’ scribbles turn into airy, elegant, witty forms.

MASS DINING TABLE by Belgian designer Alain Gilles for the Italian company Bonaldo has an airy latticed base inspired by 1830s crinoline hoop skirts; it is made of sintered, laser-cut, welded and powder-coated or copper-finish tubular metal, precisely engineered by a computer-controlled robot; the top is of hand-finished glass, marble, or oak wood. Prices start at around $3,800 and vary depending on color and materials. bonaldo.it

GALLERY

REEF DINING TABLE

from Holly Hunt

Outdoor features either natural or engineered stone atop a powdercoated metal base. Available for $6,840 at Kneedler-Fauchère San Francisco. kneedlerfauchere.com

TAILOR SOFA by Portuguese designer Rui Alves for Menu Denmark features a white-oak wood frame and structured seat with 24 leather and fabric options including Kvadart (shown here). Made in Lithuania. Available at A+R starting at $5,290. aplusrstore.com

AQUILA PENDANT II by PaganiStudio features an antiqued solid bronze frame and natural hand-laid clear quartz lower shade and a European alabaster upper shade with an antiqued solid bronze canopy. Available to the trade at Sloan Miyasato. sloanm.com

COMMODORE designed by Piero Lissoni for Glas Italia features sliding doors on transparent plexiglass tracks, glossy chromium-plated metal legs and a silvered base. Shown here in striped printed tempered glass for $12,715. Available at ddc. ddcnyc.com

TALLIS TABLE by McCollin Bryan for Holly Hunt features a hexagonal metal frame in gold finish with resin top in Siberian Green (shown here or in Gold Quartz, Rose Quartz or Duck Egg Blue). Base also comes in black finish. Available for $4,788 at Kneedler-Fauchère San Francisco. kneedlerfauchere.com

MUIR CABINET designed and made-to-order by Tuell + Reynolds is made with lost wax cast bronze with customizable and replaceable wood interior cabinet inserts. Shown here in medium bronze patina with a clear lacquer top coat. Trade pricing available upon request at De Sousa Hughes. desousahughes.com

DAWN STOOL designed and manufactured by EQ3 features a solid ash seat on a powder-coated steel base in either light gray or black (shown here). Available for $249.99. eq3.com

PEGGY SIDE TABLE designed and manufactured by EQ3 is made from powder-coated black steel. Available for $49.99. eq3.com

ISHI by Japanese design studio Nendo for DePadova features a wooden base in Lebanon cedar to hold an extra-clear tempered glass top. Available for $11,433 at Dzine. dzineliving.com

C-U-C-ME OUTDOOR by Kenneth Cobonpue features delicately woven wire dipped into Salago fiber, colored and protected in powder coating. Available for $660 at Kenneth Cobonpue Flagship Showroom NYC. kennethcobonpue.com

RITA STOOL features a seat made from a combination of woods (cherry, oak, magnolia and birch) fastened with brass pins to a maple base. Handcrafted in Japan from all Japanese wood species. Price upon request at Turtle & Hare. turtleandhare.net

HAVANA FAN CHAIR by Louis Ho for RH is crafted with all-weather wicker cording on an aluminum frame and teak base. Prices start at $1,195 at RH. rh.com

CHARLOTTE GUEST CHAIR by Noé Duchaufour-Lawrance for Bernhardt Design is made from solid American walnut and features a seat upholstered in either fabric or leather (shown here). Trade pricing available at Bernhardt Design San Francisco. bernhardtdesign.com

GALILEO MIRROR by Mario Ferrarini for Living Divani features a steel plate structure with a dark bronzed finish, obtained by electroplating. A stainless steel cable passes through the mirror’s circumference. Available for $3,224 at Dzine. dzineliving.com

PALIS by Marco Fumagalli for Roche-Bobois is a four-door sideboard featuring a combination of solid wood strips and solar powered glass on the front and interior glass shelves. Manufactured in Europe. Available for $8,815 at Roche-Bobois. roche-bobois.com

More Light, More View.

Milgard Style Line® Series vinyl windows are crafted with narrow frames to allow for more visible glass area. The slim-profile design minimizes obstructed view between two windows, making Style Line Series a great choice to use in combinations that reflect a sleek, contemporary look. Frames are available in a multitude of neutral colors to blend with softer tones. Plus, Style Line windows feature the Milgard Full Lifetime Warranty.

1.800.MILGARD • milgard.com

LUKIS ARMCHAIR by Indonesian designer Abie Abdillah for Cappellini features seat base and backrest made from rattan on a rubber wood structure. Available for $1,100 as shown (plus $130 for an optional removable seat cushion) at Arkitektura. arksf.com

MONTESQUIEU SQUARE CHANDELIER by San Francisco–based Jonathan Browning features faceted crystals surrounded by solid bands finished in either lacquered burnished brass (shown here), bronze or polished nickel. Available for $5,995 at RH Modern. rhmodern.com

KOEDA by Japanese design studio Nendo for Cappellini is a cloth hanger made of powder-coated metal in either solid or alternating colors of black, white, pale shades of blue, pink and ecru. Available for $1,550 at Arkitektura. arksf.com

FOXHOLE ARMCHAIR by Nathan Young for Dselex, features a powder-coated steel rod structure with removable cushion seat. Made in Italy. Prices start at $5,238 at Dsegnare. dsegnare.com

CROIX DE BOIS TABLE by Mattia Albicini & Luca Martorano for Ceccotti is made from solid American walnut with either marble or various glass top finishes. Available in smoked glass as shown for $4,838 at ddc. ddcnyc.com

TRES TABLE from Toronto-based Powell & Bonnell features a hand-finished sapphire resin top with tri-leg polished nickel base (shown here). Available in seven other resin colors and 14 metal finishes. Available to the trade at Shears & Window. shearsandwindow.com

DRAPE LINEAR 7 CHANDELIER designed in Healdsburg by SkLO features glass spheres handblown in the Czech Republic. Shown here with opaque white glass, dark oxidized finish and gold fabric wrapped cord and also available in three other glass colors and electrical cord fabric options. Available for $3,910 at Lunaria. lunaria.us

ALEA TABLES

Michael Schneider for Artisan feature a transparent glass top shelf and a ceramic tile bottom shelf on a solid wood frame (in oak, walnut, cherry, elm or maple) finished in oil and wax. Price upon request at Stillfried Wien.

SEVEN MILES TABLE by Robert Lazzeroni for Ceccotti features a glass top resting upon an American walnut base. Available in 3 glass finishes. Starting at $34,231 through ddc. ddcnyc.com

We’re just like you, part of a community, and know a home isn’t merely a place to live, but a place where one creates a life. We are committed to your interests and to serving the community with a sense of joy and accomplishment.

I needed a place to put my feet up.

BY ZAHID SARDAR

PLAYING WITH NOGUCHI

HILLS AND TREES to climb and ponds to swim in are missing in rigidly planned and aging postwar city parks. This fact has had a constraining effect on children’s play and their ability to socialize with other children for half a century. Slides in such parks are like stiff funnels, and swings move only in prescribed arcs, leaving little room for imaginative interaction.

But such limiting ideas for play spaces have begun to fade, thanks to the decades-long efforts of the late California-born Japanese-American sculptor, furniture designer and landscape architect Isamu Noguchi. And now the public can get in on the fun by viewing scale models and sketches of playgrounds inspired by hills, dales, basic shapes and geometric patterns in the exhibition Noguchi’s Playscapes, at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art from July 15 through November 26.

As early as 1933, with his conceptual, unbuilt Play Mountain playground for New York City,

featuring a pyramidal terrace and a carved slope on one side for children to slide down on sleds in winter, Noguchi pioneered the notion of sculpture — often organic in shape and inspired by nature — to be used and not just admired at a distance.

Noguchi’s influence grew ever wider after his 1958 garden with Marcel Breuer for UNESCO in Paris and a years-long collaboration with architect Louis Kahn for a children’s park in New York during the 1960s. The latter park was also never built but was nevertheless an important design breakthrough.

Noguchi’s artful playgrounds, conceived as sculpted landscapes, echoed pre-Columbian burial mounds and surrealist artworks and conveyed a blend of Western and Eastern aesthetics, but they were always vested with the notion that play should never be too tightly programmed.

“Sculpture can be a vital force in our everyday life if projected into communal usefulness,” was

A 20th-century sculptor’s interactive art for playgrounds.

Top: Isamu Noguchi’s design for the U.S. Pavilion Expo ’70, 1968. Above: Slide Mantra Maquette, c. 1985; Noguchi explored the form from 1966 until 1988 when it was eventually carved in black granite for the Odori Park in Sapporo, Japan.

his lifelong mantra. It undoubtedly resonated with Bay Area artist/landscape architect Lawrence Halprin of Sea Ranch fame, who applied Noguchi’s vision in several public parks, and the late Marin-based sculptor/designer J.B. Blunk, who met Noguchi in Japan and whose monumental Brancusian redwood pieces are often shaped like landforms.

Included in the exhibition are also Noguchi’s stage set designs for legendary dancer Martha Graham — minimalistic, symbolic armatures that were ladder-like props for action and movement — that led him to think

of equally interactive sculptural props in playgrounds. There are also photographs of built parks in Japan, where Noguchi grew up, and angular play structures in the United States, where he spent his last years and died in 1988.

Organized by Mexico City’s Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo and the Fundacíon Olga y Rufino Tamayo, A.C., in collaboration with The Noguchi Museum in New York, the exhibition was brought to San Francisco by SFMOMA architecture and design curator Jennifer Dunlop Fletcher, who saw it during a visit to the Tamayo last fall.

The Tamayo is housed in a 1981 building that rises like a stepped mound of concrete and stone within Chapultepec Park, and it could be argued that it too is the result of Noguchi’s thinking that undoubtedly influenced the land art movements of the late 1960s. Inside and outside the museum, Fletcher saw replicas of Noguchi’s work, including his 1976 Playscape garden for Atlanta, Ga. — the only Noguchi playground that got built during his lifetime — and other ideas that could suitably be applied to Bay Area parks.

“He was really interested in the haptic [tactile] relation to art that is lost in museums. Through play, we are less socially inhibited, and as public space becomes increasingly politicized and privatized, Noguchi’s thoughtful designs for play, reflection and creative stimulation” are still the Holy Grail, Fletcher says. “Today, so many designers cite Noguchi’s outdoor works as influential.”

She knows this from personal experience. Last March, San Francisco’s 1850s ovoid, Englishstyle South Park, near her home, opened after a yearlong $3.8 million overhaul by none other than landscape architect David Fletcher, who is the curator’s husband. His new strolling garden design features oblong concrete pavers and molded vertebrae-like concrete wall benches; his firm, Fletcher Studio, in collaboration with Miracle Playsystems, also designed an inviting sculptural roller-coaster-like painted steel play structure, with netting on the sides to climb on and a row of “tire” swings suspended from its undulating frame.

“It is definitely classic Noguchi,” the curator says, having experienced it firsthand. “We had our son’s birthday celebration there.” n

Noguchi viewed play equipment that echoed forms from nature and ancient cultures as interactive art. Above, clockwise from top: Playground equipment for Ala Moana Park, Hawaii, c. 1940, is among his many unbuilt concepts; photographer Fay S. Lincoln’s image of Noguchi’s playground equipment for Ala Moana Park, Hawaii, c. 1940; Noguchi’s Jungle Gym, a set element for performers in Erick Hawkins’s dance “Stephen Acrobat,” 1947. Bottom: A 2017 play structure by Fletcher Studio in South Park, San Francisco.

MOLDING CLÉ

SOMETIMES “MAKING” SOMETHING simply means shaping a business, and that’s exactly what Deborah Osburn, 56, founder of a Sausalito-based online tile showroom, did.

Actually, it was an accident. About 30 years ago, armed with a fine arts degree in sculpture from the Kansas City Art Institute, she walked into a tile showroom in Denver and got a sales job.

“I was never drawn to clay or to ceramics at art school,” Osburn admits. “But, I suddenly fell in love with artisanal tiles. While the rest of the country was selling 4-by-4-inch white tiles, this store had colorful tiles from the rest of the world!”

Monocottura and bicottura tiles from Japan and Italy with different surfaces and glazes were a new frontier for Osburn.

“I discovered a business side to my interest in art.”

A Sausalito designer redefines tile. Again.

Clé founder Deborah Osburn takes a break from making her lowfired Watermark Indigo tiles in her dining room.

After she moved to San Francisco in 1986, she became a kind of gallerist, sourcing terra-cotta, stoneware, lithographed cement, stone and porcelain mosaics, decorated porcelain, and even steel, glass and ceramic tiles, some with beautiful Islamic patterns from Morocco that are centuries old.

Then she discovered a unique niche — the need for thin strips of colored accent tiles, of the kind used during the Victorian era, that Bay Area remodelers could not find anywhere.

“I got this birdbrain idea to do a tiny decorative tile and a friend with a kiln produced them,” Osburn says. The tiles became very popular, and she managed a 200-person factory churning out her slender Bisq’ettes tiles for Home Depot and Lowe’s. She ramped up production, imported Italian equipment and perhaps moved too swiftly from being an artisanal firm to a mass producer, then got engulfed by venture capitalists who absorbed her 15-yearold company and soon “ran it into the ground,” Osburn says, ruefully.

Lesson learned. She focused on raising her preschooler sons Sam and Luca, all the while selling her favorite handpicked tiles from her studio. Many of them were designed by her and produced around the globe, but business was slow, as the building industry continued to shun unique, artisanal products.

When both her sons reached high school five years ago, Osburn spotted another frontier: the internet.

“It was a dream come true. Until then the tile industry was set up so you had to sell through large wholesale distributors who made the rules. Now I could reach my customer directly,” she says.

It began with a blog called Tile Envy — a kind of lament (now contained in a book of the same

name) where she could express both her love of beautiful tiles and her frustration that so few of them were freely available. “Within weeks I had a large audience asking about particular tiles I had shown. Artists approached me and I became this conduit of information about something I had promoted for so long. My new business was decided for me. I could sell online.”

Clé Tile was born and customers sought her classic tiles, as well as contemporary collaborations with artists such as Ruan Hoffmann from South Africa and Boris Aldridge and Timorous Beasties from the United Kingdom. Fashion designer Erica Tanov from Berkeley has recently joined the ranks as a tile designer.

“Everyone sources online now and I am like a kid in a sandbox,” Osburn exults. “Brick-and-mortar showrooms are no longer the first resource for interior designers.”

Clockwise from top left: Designer tiles made by Clé include Watermark gold/verdigris and indigo bisque tiles by Deborah Osburn; Baccio, by fashion designer Erica Tanov; Indian Ocean, designed by celebrated South African artist Ruan Hoffmann.

moon & stars

Three years ago, in another serendipitous twist, Osburn happened to be drawn to a piece of low-fired unglazed porcelain tile at a porcelain factory in the wine country; she took it home and dipped it into a glass full of indigo dye and forgot about it. Days later she noticed that the dye had eventually wicked up and made a fascinating watermark that resembled shibori textiles. She saved the sample and sealed it with polyurethane. A local designer spotted it and commissioned a huge batch for a fancy fireplace in San Francisco’s Presidio Heights. Watermark tiles are now among Osburn’s best sellers.

“In the past, a distributor would not have understood its potential. Now, thanks to the internet, it speaks directly to designers and sells itself,” Osburn says.

A legitimate “maker” these days, she has encouraged her son Luca, 20, to pick up brushes and dyes. “I can watch him and mentor him,” Osburn says. An avid surfer, he produces the Watermark line and has recently conjured up Tides, a new design with wavy lines of blue on a white surface. These durable 4-by-8-inch made-to-order tiles, which cost about $22 each, are meant for backsplashes, shower walls and fireplaces. They have been rigorously tested “in one of the harshest environments we could think of: a dishwasher,” Osburn says wryly.

Luca is a de facto artist-in-residence, and Osburn is keen on expanding the notion. “Tile-making is not taught in schools and my vendors’ children are often no longer willing to do what their families did for generations.”

So, some Clé artists who are retiring are being recruited as mentors. For example, John Whitmarsh will mentor a young artist named Kayla Farrrell-Martin rather than just “taking his artisanal knowledge with him,” Osburn says. She will also encourage all protégés to experiment. “People have a fixed understanding of what tiles should be,” Osburn says. “We are trying to change that.” cletile.com n

“It was a dream come true. Until then the tile industry was set up so you had to sell through large wholesale distributors who made the rules. Now I could reach my customer directly.”

REINVENTING THE BATHROOM

Barbara Sallick, author of The Perfect Bath and co-founder of Waterworks, brings European style to the most important room in the house.

BY LAURA HILGERS VOICES

Waterworks co-founder Barbara Sallick how the company created its elegant, all-white look, be prepared for a surprising reply. You might expect her to expound on timelessness and simplicity, which exemplify the luxury kitchen and bath brand’s style. But Sallick prefers honesty. “It was because I was a horrible bookkeeper and inventory planner,” she says. “I mean, horrible.”

Sallick breaks into a laugh as she says this, to underscore how naïve she and her husband, Robert, were when they started their company in Danbury, Connecticut, in 1978. But among the handful of happy mistakes they made, they can credit at least some of their success to placing her in charge of making sure they ordered

It’s probably best to give some history here: Barbara never intended to get into the sink and faucet business at all. In the early ’70s, she was a young mother with a job she loved, working for the curator of American Decorative Arts at Yale University Art Gallery. The position required her to evaluate objects like 18th-century teapots for their detail, proportion and aesthetic worth. More than anything, she wanted to stay at that job.

But on their many trips abroad as a young couple, the Sallicks noticed how different European bathrooms were from those with which they’d grown up. At the time, Americans’ bathrooms were small and utilitarian, in shades of Pepto-Bismol pink or powder blue. The European bath, by contrast, was a sanctuary.

As the Sallicks grew increasingly enamored of European-style baths, they visited Villeroy & Boch’s headquarters in Germany, watching fixtures fly down a roller hearth kiln. They combed through British salvage yards, uncovering classic objects from the Edwardian era. They visited European designer bath showrooms, which told a complete story, matching sinks, faucets and tiles. They asked themselves, “Wouldn’t Amer-

But when Robert suggested they make it a business, Barbara hesitated. Robert was already in plumbing supplies, working for the company Barbara’s father started in 1925. Creating their

“Barbara is a visionary in bathroom design. She has elevated the bath to a designer experience.”

own business, though, meant Barbara would have to leave the job she loved.

In the end, Waterworks won out. “It was going to be something Robert and I would share,” says Barbara. “Little did I know what it would be like working with your husband. I didn’t even know to ask the question, ‘Is that a good thing?’ ”

The answer has been a resounding yes. After the Sallicks used up their savings and took out an expensive loan, they launched Waterworks in a building Barbara’s father lent them in Danbury. Since then, the company has grown into a multimillion-dollar operation (recently acquired by Restoration Hardware) with 14 showrooms worldwide, including one in San Francisco.

Along the way, Waterworks also established Barbara as a leading voice in the design world. “Barbara is a visionary in bathroom design,” says award-winning San Francisco architect Andrew Skurman. “She has elevated the bath to a designer experience.”

Barbara did this by combining her two great passions: family and classic, timeless style. “When I was at Yale, I would look at a teapot and decide whether it was beautiful. Does it have the right foot? Does it have the right finial? Does the handle match the spout? I spent years looking at objects and deciding whether they were good, better or best,” she says. “I took all that into how I look at a faucet.”

Originally, Barbara and Robert struggled to clarify the story they wanted to tell, and, says Barbara, “it was a number of years before I could even draw a salary of $58 a week.” They opened their first showroom in Danbury,

Isla gooseneck lavatory faucet with metal petra handles; Isla 22-inch round wall mounted mirror; Rowan single washstand; Grove Brickworks bronca.

Jary

For sales and art-placement services, visit sfmoma.org/artists-gallery

drawing upon the European model, displaying entire bath vignettes, from tile to tub to sink to fixtures — a new concept for Americans, who usually picked items separately from a catalog.

They sold luxury fixtures from companies like Villeroy & Boch and Dornbracht and introduced Americans to whirlpool baths. Despite invitations to architects, designers and plumbers to visit, though, they barely got a bite. The plumbers would walk in, see Barbara, and ask, ‘Honey, where’s your husband?’

Barbara would reply, “He doesn’t work here and he doesn’t call me ‘honey’ and you can’t either.”

When people did place an order, they often bumped up against Barbara’s woeful bookkeeping and inventory skills, which caused enormous problems. “If I had something in blue, I would have a sink but I wouldn’t have a blue toilet,” says Barbara. “Or I’d have a blue bathtub and I wouldn’t have a blue sink.”

About five years in, Robert turned to Barbara and, exasperated, said, “This is really aggravating for both of us. What if we gave all our inventory of colored sinks and toilets to Habitat for Humanity and sold only white?”

The idea was frightening. “It was a remarkably bold statement,” she says, “but it was really the turning point for our business.” All of a sudden, Waterworks had clarity about the story it wanted to tell. “It was easy and simple and it resonated,” says Barbara. “We felt we were more authentic. It was something we understood completely ourselves, so it was much easier to talk about: the purity, hygiene and cleanliness of the all-white bath.”

After that, Waterworks drew the attention of architects and designers worldwide. The company became known for its impeccable style and artisanal quality craftsmanship, from its pedestal sinks to cross-handled faucets to luxurious white bath towels. “In the beginning, they tended to be very modern and new,” says Paul Egee, an independent Waterworks design consultant. “But then gradually Barbara applied her knowledge of antiques and classicism to the business and began to work with vendors who would produce things that had a historical reference to them.”

It was an area the Sallicks knew well, having built their own Connecticut home using an 18th-century blueprint. And as they continually clarified their aesthetic, Americans embraced it. Waterworks baths, sinks, towels and faucets now appear in luxury locations from the Ace Hotel in Los Angeles to the Cloister in

Jary Niebur, FF3300 , 2017;

photo: courtesy the artist

Niebur, Recent Paintings on View Room C260 thru Sept 30.

Sea Island, Georgia, to yes, the homes of the Kardashian clan.

As Barbara redefined bathroom style, she also forged her way as a woman in the “boys’ club” design world. “I had to make things up as I went along,” she says. “The generation after me had many role models. I just didn’t have any, other than observing Gloria Steinem and Bella Abzug.”

To keep things equitable, she and Robert took turns being president of the company. One year, he was president and got to make all the big decisions; the next year, she took the reins. In 1993, they handed the business to their son, Peter, who’s now CEO. Their other son, Dan, is the press secretary for a Florida congressman — and chairman of the board of Washington’s Hirshhorn Museum.

“I decided long ago that the only thing that mattered was not the business at all, but that our family stayed intact and that we were close and tight,” she says. “Somehow we managed to make that happen.”

Credit Sallick’s staggering energy for being able to pull it all off. Though she’s at an age when other people are perusing river cruise catalogs, she hasn’t slowed down. She still works full time as Waterworks’ senior vice-president of design. She blogs regularly and travels all over the country (taking red-eyes to save time) lecturing on bath design. And just last year, she published her second book, The Perfect Bath.

“None of us know how she keeps up her work and travel schedule,” says Paul Egee. “Sometimes I sit there and think, ‘Wait, she’s considerably older than me, and way more energetic.’ I don’t know how she does it.” Like her design style, it’s simple: Sallick is driven by a passion for timelessness and beauty. Just keep her away from the books. n

THE CENTER OF IT ALL...

Waterworks’ 8,000-square-foot showroom is located in the design district in San Francisco.

Over 50 Stores and Restaurants, Including Costco and Target Rowland Blvd Exit, Hwy 101 • ShopVintageOaks.com

In the living room, dominated by a black steel sculpture by Brian Wall and Manuel Neri’s marble 1989 Odalisque 1 on the floor, are a Louise Nevelson–esque bookshelf and steel pivot door to the kitchen that Francis Mill designed with Chris French. Visible on the kitchen wall is Neri’s 1960 red plaster-and-cardboard Moon Sculpture II

On the ceiling above the Corbusier chaise is Emerson Woelffer’s 1954 oil on canvas Colorado. Near the daybed/banquette by interior designer Stephan Jones is a portrait by David Park.

Conversations

In the living room, dominated by a black steel sculpture by Brian Wall and Manuel Neri’s marble 1989 Odalisque 1 on the floor, are a Louise Nevelson–esque bookshelf and steel pivot door to the kitchen that Francis Mill designed with Chris French. Visible on the kitchen wall is Neri’s 1960 red plaster-and-cardboard Moon Sculpture II

On the ceiling above the Corbusier chaise is Emerson Woelffer’s 1954 oil on canvas Colorado. Near the daybed/banquette by interior designer Stephan Jones is a portrait by David Park.

SAN FRANCISCO GALLERIST FRANCIS

MILL’S LOFT IS NOW A SOAPBOX FOR MIDCENTURY ART AND DESIGN.

BY ZAHID SARDAR

PHOTOGRAPHS BY DAVID DUNCAN LIVINGSTON

ersations with Art

SAN FRANCISCO GALLERIST FRANCIS

MILL’S LOFT IS NOW A SOAPBOX FOR MIDCENTURY ART AND DESIGN.

BY ZAHID SARDAR

PHOTOGRAPHS BY DAVID DUNCAN LIVINGSTON

Conversations with Art

The daybed directly under Sentinel, a 1961 collage by artist Conrad Marca-Relli, doubles as Mill’s guest bed. The wood shutter flanking the front door on the right screens out lights in the hallway outside at night. A minimalist coffee table designed by Mill and French is made of salvaged lumber fitted with steel legs. In the foreground, left, a sculpture incorporating a weighing scale is by Mill; he is seen standing, in the vignette on the right, near a scroll painting by his father.

RECENTLY, AT FRANCIS MILL’S

home in a former 1937 warehouse in San Francisco’s SoMa neighborhood, the usually effusive gallerist seemed subdued. The British painter Howard Hodgkin had died just the day before.

Mill’s San Francisco gallery, Hackett-Mill, represents the work of midcentury abstract expressionists like Hodgkin, and a couple of his paintings hang inside Mill’s home. “They will be moved often,” Mill says, “to form new ‘conversations.’ When artists are gone, you can talk to them in this way.”

The 1,300-square-foot one-bedroom loft, remodeled during the 1980s, had Pompeiian red walls, heavy drapes and wrought iron details when Mill acquired it in 2005. That’s gone now.

The board-formed concrete walls, troweled ceilings and scored floors are again a brutalist gray and the drywall partitions white, forming a neutral container for art.

The front door opens into an L-shaped living/dining room. Next to it, a room with west-facing windows, previously the building’s elevator shaft, was turned into an art studio and

home office. Flanking these spaces are the kitchen on the northeast corner and the northwest-side bedroom, linked by a 3-foot-wide hallway running parallel to built-in closets and a bathroom sandwiched between both rooms.

Mill, who studied architecture and fine arts before becoming the dean of graduate studies at the Academy of Art University, treats the interior like an assemblage sculpture, creating unexpected juxtapositions of art and modernist furnishings.

“My process is spontaneous. Sometimes when I look up from a book I am reading, I get an idea,” Mill says. That’s how he thought of suspending an Emerson Woelffer canvas from the ceiling above a Corbusier chaise his mother gave him.

In 2007 Mill recruited Oakland metalsmith Chris French to replace an entertainment unit between the living room and the kitchen hallway with new bookshelves. During demolition they realized that with the unit gone, they had better access and sight lines from the living room into the kitchen. So they kept the opening and fitted it with a floor-to-ceiling pivot door of black steel panels riveted together, as a nod to sculptor Louise Nevelson. Next to it, a portal to the original hallway was filled in with Nevelson-esque black painted stacked wood and steel crates for Mill’s art books.

Craving more storage and display areas, Mill identified unused pockets of space in soffits, around columns and in corners, and in 2013 he asked Los Angeles interior designer Stephan Jones to help him maximize every square inch.

Jones, who also happens to be a collage artist, is Mill’s perfect foil. They are friends and met professionally when Jones and his art-buying clients first visited Mill’s gallery more than 10 years ago.

“We always discuss concepts and aesthetics easily,” Jones says.

Together he and Mill made the loft into a truly versatile space. They ripped out closets, kitchen cabinets and unwanted doors to free up walls, and they introduced custom millwork from Henrybuilt.

With fewer doors, “it is a sequence of semi-enclosed spaces,” Jones says. “There is always a sense of something beyond what’s visible.”

The new storage is more efficient and makes the place, as Mill says, quoting the architect Le Corbusier, “a machine for living in.”

“With fewer doors, ‘it is a sequence of semi-enclosed spaces. There is always a sense of something beyond what’s visible.’ ”

Facing page: For the dining niche, Jones designed a banquette, seen under a red 1981 painting, Lit de Marriage, presented to the writer Howard Hughes and his wife Victoria Whistler by the late British artist Howard Hodgkin; Jones paired it with a round travertine-topped table and vintage chairs. On the back wall is Russian color field artist Jules Olitski’s large 1960 canvas Fanny. D; on the right, untitled totem, a 1963 white painted assemblage of scrap wood by Richard Faralla. Right: Views of Mill’s atelier at home inside the former elevator shaft.

Mill’s atelier has a vintage French steel work-table from Maisonry. New bookshelves and a roll-away steel blackboard are by French. The wingback chair is from Coup D’Etat. In the foreground, a plaster work is by Manuel Neri. A storage case with drawers for Mill’s art materials is by Henrybuilt.

For example, in the bedroom where there is just a bed and chair because “we abolished unnecessary furniture,” Mill says, the closet now has a hinged, boxlike raw plywood “door” inspired by Donald Judd’s sculpture. The closet is a “dressing” container with a full-length mirror, shoes and other accessories that you can walk into when the door is opened.

Storage cupboards in the hallway have flat panel doors that double as walls to hang art on. One cupboard has built-in drawers finished with blackboard paint so Mill can leave laundry instructions for the maid; sliding drawer lids are for folding shirts on; very shallow shelves behind the cupboard door neatly hold Mill’s vast collection of eyewear.

For the art studio, Jones and Mill designed a long desk with storage drawers — including one filled with sand for a miniature indoor Zen garden — and flat file drawers with compartments for art supplies, wood blocks and other materials for sculpture. On the north wall, new bookshelves by French are fitted with a vertical steel blackboard for writing notes; it rolls from side to side on a track.

The passageway to Mill’s bedroom is lined with flush closet doors that double as walls for art; an opening in the middle leads to the bathroom; on the left, a display shelf behind the living room’s black steel bookcase; on the concrete wall is Hudson’s Blue, a 1975 aluminum work by Brian Wall. Opposite, top: Left of the bed are works by Louise Nevelson and above it, In the Public Garden, Naples, a red 1981 oil on wood by Hodgkin. The plywood Donald Judd–esque closet door is shown open. Inset: Mill’s collection of eyeglasses in narrow steel shelves by French.

A banquette and bookshelves form a dining alcove in the living area. Another space-saving feature — a daybed divan with storage underneath, tucked into a niche by the pivot door — doubles as a guest bed.

The center of the open-plan room is currently taken by a solid life-size marble torso by Manuel Neri, reclining on the floor beside a black 10-foot-high constructivist welded-steel work by Emeryville-based British sculptor Brian Wall. Near it, a white painted 10-foothigh wood totem by ’60s sculptor Richard Faralla also seems permanent and immovable.

However, “the core elements of Brian’s sculpture are not solid. The form is merely outlined in steel and is quite light,” Mill says, adding confidently that even if it were heavy, he could move it. He’s had practice. Mill’s family used to have an appliances and furniture business in the Mission District, where he sometimes handled large crates.

Now as a purveyor of art he reveals a deeper family bond: his father, who emigrated from Hong Kong, is also a painter, and one of his minimalist brush renderings on a rice paper scroll hangs near Wall’s sculpture.

The senior Mill’s calligraphic meditations often describe a mood or thought, perhaps referencing the flight of birds or reflections of bamboo in a pool of water, but “their essential message, that there is great complexity within simplicity, has many parallels in Western painting,” Mill notes. “Consider Rothko or Agnes Martin. The main reason we feel that Western and Eastern art do not have similar messages is that they look so different.

“It was just this kind of cross-cultural dialogue that can be described as an American vision that led to abstract expressionism,” he adds. “In New York, Kenzo Okada was shown alongside de Kooning and Pollock.”

Clearly, for a collector, buying art is just the beginning. “Living with it is an ongoing conversation,” Mill says. “I can never get enough of that.” n

Wild Things

INTERIOR DESIGNERS JEFF AND TRAY SCHLARB

MIX SHAPES, COLORS AND TEXTURES IN THEIR MIDCENTURY SEA CLIFF HOME.

BY ZAHID SARDAR PHOTOGRAPHS BY AUBRIE PICK

The Schlarbs’ open-plan white-walled home has angled spaces, exotic furnishings and yards of lively veined marble. Opposite: The new open bar adjacent to the dining table; bleached antlers and a Klismos-style Scala Luxury chair add animal notes. This page: A spider-like Jean De Merry light from Lumière in the kitchen floats above a solid marble-clad island with a cantilevered top.

Between the bar and kitchen, an unusual ovoid dining table from HD Buttercup is surrounded by chairs from Organic Modernism, covered in Mokum fabric. The wire chandelier is from Arteriors. Blue braided rope fiber art by Meghan Bogden Shimek complements a wood console by Noir below it. Engineered oak floors called Touraine are by DuChateau. Opposite: In the foyer, a round Farrah mirror from Arteriors hangs above a Nuevo Kulu seared-oak credenza with a bronzed cast-iron base.

TWO YEARS AGO, when Jeff Schlarb, 41, and his wife, Tray, found a triangular site with an unimpressive 1955 two-story split-level house in San Francisco’s Sea Cliff neighborhood, they snapped it up.

“We’ve always liked odd lots,” Schlarb says.

The L-shaped 2,500-square-foot structure, atop a garage and basement rooms on a slightly sloped lot, was nothing like its 1930s neoclassical neighbors. Although it needed a lot of tweaking, “we loved its midcentury simplicity,” he recalls.

But it was awkward in shape and plan. Its asymmetrical facade was ultra-wide and the front stairs in the middle ran straight up to conventional living spaces on the top floor and two bedrooms and bathrooms half a story below them. On the plus side, its large French windows opened onto a back deck and views of the Golden Gate Bridge. The boxy building hovered high above Baker Beach and it reminded the couple of a cabin they had on a promontory overlooking the Russian River.

“Sea Cliff is truly inspirational,” Schlarb says. “It is like no other neighborhood. We are not actually on a cliff, but we hear waves and smell the ocean.”

Just four houses away, a hidden path used by families, kids, dogs and bicyclists leads to the beach. “There is a community of neat people who like walking rather than driving. We fell in love with all that and knew we could create something cool,” he says.

Since moving to San Francisco in 2001 from London, where they first met, the couple has remodeled at least five homes with their collective expertise: she is a trained interior designer from South Africa and he studied business in Missouri and European history in Belgium. They simultaneously launched Green Couch, a home-staging company.

Unexpectedly, Schlarb found himself making design decisions as well, and that eventually led to the start of Jeff Schlarb Designs.

“I don’t quite know how I ended up doing interior design but I fell in love with it,” he says. “The work found me!”

So the busy pair enthusiastically tackled the design of this latest project with Schlarb at the helm.

The interior now has 3,400 square feet of usable space on three levels.

With architect Ryan Knox, the Schlarbs made several strategic floor plan changes to the kitchen, dining and living rooms to create a new powder room off the kitchen and, half a story below, next to the two bedrooms for their daughters Isabella, 9, and Audrey, 6, an extra office space/den for Schlarb.

The L-shaped living/dining room on the top floor seems larger because a wall between the kitchen and dining area is now gone, making for a truly open plan. True, adding a 4-footwide wall for the powder room did wind up obstructing a preexisting Golden Gate Bridge view from the front door. But now, “that change forces you to fully enter the living space before you see the view,” Schlarb says approvingly.

In the living area where large windows with views of the Golden Gate Bridge open to a wide deck, the twig-like Linden chandelier is from Future Perfect. The ram photograph by Peter Samuels is echoed in the textured Lawrence of La Brea rug and a fleece draped over the curved Vladimir Kagan–inspired settee by Antonio Martins. The peaked ceilings were deliberately made asymmetrical.

“When you see it from the middle of the room, the bridge is perfectly framed by the windows.”

They also pushed false ceilings up to the roofline wherever possible. But in the living room Schlarb decided to set the apex of the peaked ceiling off-center and not directly above the central chimney for the fireplace against the west wall. “We did not want it to look like the inside of a barn,” he explains.

A marble-wrapped kitchen island with a long cantilevered top is a sculptural addition he particularly loves: “It looks so simple but was very hard to achieve, with a lot of structural steel hidden within it.”

The old split-level basement used to have two jerry-rigged bedrooms and a family room, as well as very low ceilings. They lowered the entire floor into the crawl space below, and now a small guest

bathroom, a guest room, a family room, and a master suite with a capacious bathroom are all on the same level, with 9-foot-high ceilings.

New French doors in the master bedroom open to a small deck “where we have coffee and tea in the morning and smell the sea and listen to waves crashing on the beach,” Schlarb says.

While husband and wife were completely in sync regarding the architectural moves, they sparred when it came to the design of the interiors.

“Tray likes tone on tone and prefers cream and beige, but I like contrast, colors, shapes and textures,” he says.

Thus, gray Touraine-engineered oak planks by DuChateau cover the floors, and walls are painted subtle variations of white from room to room — but with a couple of notable exceptions. Schlarb exercised less restraint in the powder room, which has jazzy Timorous Beasties ombre wallpaper, and in his den, which also has a sloped ceiling, the walls are painted a deep navy blue.

“If every room were a showstopper like this one, it would have been too much,” he admits with a laugh. “I don’t like to give people a headache.”

Still, his shoot-from-the-hip eclecticism is visible throughout.

Framed animal images, sculptural light fixtures and modern chandeliers confirm that the maverick designer’s do’s and don’ts aren’t from any rule book.

“In boxy spaces or in a corner I use a barrel-back chair so it does not compete with the walls,” Schlarb says. “I look for a handsome shape. If I’ve seen it too much, I avoid it because I don’t want something trendy.”

“When you mix art with engaging, artful furnishings there is something to look at. You can stop and admire a painting or pause at a handmade object and wonder if it was sewn or glued together, if its material is acrylic or leather,” he says.

Eschewing midcentury furniture clichés, he opted instead for the curves and angles of a classic Holly Hunt chair and a tufted sofa in the living room; a custom settee was inspired by a vintage Vladimir Kagan original; a hard-to-find ovoid dining table is from HD Buttercup.

And on the wall he hung Meghan Bogden Shimek’s blue braided fiber art, because “I just needed the wild color!” n

Opposite: The new master suite on the lowest floor reflects the home’s pale palette; bathroom sconces are by Arteriors. This page: Schlarb’s home office, with unexpectedly dark navy blue walls, doubles as a den and home theater. Its brightly colored rug is from Krimsa. The vintage midcentury desk is from Past Perfect and the floor clock behind it is by South African designer Gregor Jenkin.

A console from Harlow Made Goods rests on a sari silk rug from Stark Carpets. Plushly covered stools continue the emphasis on luxurious materials and sumptuous textures in the entranceway. Opposite: In the media room, owner Raquel DiSabatino’s rock photographs share shelf space with candles, objects and sculptures put together to look as though they’ve always belonged together.

ROCK STEADY

A ROCK-AND-ROLL-INFLECTED COLLABORATION BRINGS COLOR AND TEXTURE TO THE SUMPTUOUS INTERIOR OF THIS OTHERWISE UNASSUMING SAN RAFAEL CRAFTSMAN.

BY EVA HAGBERG FISHER PHOTOGRAPHS BY ADZA

A vintage console from Coup D’Etat rests on top of Stark sisal carpet; above the wood, Donghia Grasscloth with metallic ground creates a deep background texture. Opposite: In the dining room, a Flavor Paper wall mural provides a background for a chandelier custom-designed by Holly A Kopman Interior Design; a massive central dining table was produced by Evan Shively with a base fabricated by Mary Ravelli. Vintage Lugano chairs with a chrome sled base are covered in Holly Hunt aqua velvet outdoor fabric.

BOTH INTERIOR DESIGNER HOLLY KO PMAN

and client Raquel DiSabatino are quick to bring up the custom teal sofa the designer convinced the client to install in her textbook 1909 Craftsman home. Teal might seem like an unlikely sofa color choice for a Craftsman, but everything in the rock-and-roll–influenced interior of this home, tucked onto a nondescript corner of a nondescript neighborhood in the San Rafael flats, is both surprisingly unusual and absolutely right.

The project started as a quick cleanup. DiSabatino hired Sausalito-based Kopman at first to do a mild renovation — adding a powder room and removing some of the Craftsman details, including a pantry. But what started as a low-key project took on high-design priority once DiSabatino, now in her 40s, stepped into a new, independent chapter in her life, embracing the remodel as a chance to express her own particular aesthetic. After years of listening to music at San Francisco’s famous Fillmore and working as a marketing executive at the intersection of music and technology, “I am definitely more rock ’n’ roll edgy” than the home originally conveyed, DiSabatino says.

Accordingly, the designer helped her transform the look of the place, formerly closer to Pottery Barn, into the eye-catching, ultra-luxuriously textured vibe it has now. It appears to contain a lifetime’s worth of collections, though almost all the pieces were bought specifically for this house and brought together in a funky, chillwithout-being-lazy, visually compelling-without-being-busy way. Everything was

In the living room, a tufted teal custom sofa with upholstery by Patricia Edwards holds court next to teal and metallic grass cloth Donghia wall coverings. A wingback chair covered in Kelly Wearstler truffle onyx fabric rests on the sisal rug with leather edge binding from Stark. A weathered elm base holds a cement top, together forming a Holly A Kopman custom design coffee table underneath a pendant from Arteriors.

In the master bedroom, a velvet mocha headboard, custom designed by Kopman, offers a tranquil background for the brightly patterned vintage suzani bedspread. A vellum nightstand with brushed brass nailheads was also custom-designed by Kopman. The wall is covered in red grasscloth by Donghia. Opposite from top: A chocolate mohair swivel chair from Coup d’Etat rests on a sisal rug with leather edge binding from Stark Carpet; a vessel sink from Amberstone sits underneath a carved wood mirror from Arteriors, underneath pendant lighting from Bocce.

designed to walk the fine line between honoring the bones of the home and bringing in an utterly contemporary feel.

Flavor Paper wallpaper from Brooklyn adds a pebbly sheen to the dining room wall that Kopman fondly calls “the prom wall,” for DiSabatino’s practice of taking staged prom-like party photos in front of it. A custom Kopman-designed chandelier hangs in the dining room over a custom Evan Shively wood table made from a single slab of wood over a base designed, again, by Kopman. A layering of cool colors like greens and blues helps counteract the Fillmore shade of red DiSabatino chose; a Moroccan red in the bedroom lends an air of deeply sensual sanctuary.

It sounds like there’s a lot going on, but DiSabatino compares Kopman’s knack for putting seemingly disparate elements together to that of a chef: “I think of design like food; it’s the perfect blend of everything.”

The word collaboration comes up a lot with these two, who became friends over the course of the project and realized they’d probably been in each other’s social orbit for years. “We’d talk, and then I’d sit at my computer and we’d email pictures back and forth,” Kopman says of how they began to work together. DiSabatino would tell Kopman how badly she wanted a purple office; Kopman would encourage her to think about the visual and design value of a custom furniture piece.

DiSabatino relished the exchanges and found they helped her begin to translate her ephemeral desires — for a cool, somewhat edgy mood that also worked as a lively yet relaxing setting for herself and her 7-year-old son.

“She’s like a coach — like a very cool sexy designer coach,” DiSabatino says of Kopman. A very responsible coach, as well; as the scope grew, so did the budget, but it’s one Kopman stuck to. “She focuses on where you should really invest your money,” DiSabatino adds; for instance, the designer showed her how one expensive item could negate a need for 35 moderately expensive pieces. Hence the custom additions — the teal sofa, the dining table — that are so visually strong they can anchor entire rooms.

The home is “really a reflection of her personality,” Kopman says. “Once we started getting the wallpapers up and the decorative stuff in, it started to take on a life of its own.” Asked if the look — sumptuous, multivalent — is representative of her general aesthetic, she says it isn’t, actually. Her projects, she says, are “always more of a reflection of a client … with my influence.”

The vintage mirrored credenza is hers; the red is DiSabatino’s. And how does it all fit into this unassuming Craftsman? “I felt like I needed to honor that house,” Kopman says, “but make it feel modern too.” An example of the two aspects coming together is in the kitchen, where modern white tile and updated cabinet hardware play visually off the stained original wooden trim.

The house is a surprise, but the connection between the designer and client is rare. “It got to the point where she was finishing my sentences,” DiSabatino says. “It was a match made in heaven,” Kopman adds. n

“

THE DESIGNER SHOWED HER CLIENT HOW ONE EXPENSIVE ITEM COULD NEGATE THE NEED FOR 35 MODERATELY EXPENSIVE PIECES.”

THE REAL DEAL

SOLID WOOD, STEEL AND GLASS TRANSFORM A TROMPE L’OEIL ARTIST’S WAREHOUSE HOME.

BY ZAHID SARDAR PHOTOGRAPHS BY MATTHEW MILLMAN

WILLEM

RACKÉ

ARRIVED in the U.S. after studying graphic design in New Zealand and soon got hired as a decorative painter before eventually starting his own San Francisco studio in 1989.

In the intervening decades he has completed acres of delicate faux finishes, and he has gilded walls, ceilings and floors for private clients, theaters and museums all over the Bay Area. So the sturdy, board-formed concrete surfaces at his 3,000-square-foot, two-story loft in San Francisco’s SoMa district, a home he shares with husband Alberto Trejo and their two Rhodesian ridgeback dogs, come as a big surprise.

“My personal taste is for simpler surfaces than what my firm can do,” Racké says. “I wanted to maintain the feeling of a raw urban space.”

There was no need to fake that. Although a developer had previously tinkered with the 1924 former coffee-roasting factory, turning it into a mundane live-work space with partitioned cubicles, its industrial bones and soaring 13.5-foot-high ceilings were intact.

Wood and wallboard walls for rooms and closets, rudimentary bathrooms and a Home Depot kitchen had been added. A single steep wood staircase went up to the second floor, where two rectangular holes had been clumsily cut into the wood floor, directly below large industrial skylights, to bring light down into the first floor.

After buying the place in 2012, Racké pondered the changes he wanted. Retrieving the lost floor space and, because the building lacked a yard, adding a rooftop garden on the sunny roof became his priorities.

That required a new stairway and structural planning for which Racké, a self-described frustrated architect, felt ill equipped. He reached out to Luke Ogrydziak, a principal at the award-winning Ogrydziak Prillinger Architects, who had been an interiors photographer during the 1990s when the two first met.

They have remained friends, and Ogrydziak quickly understood that Racké wanted to stay away from fancy architecture, undo most of the developer’s mistakes, “and yet bring natural light deep into the space,” Ogrydziak says.

They gutted interior walls, replaced the single-pane steel windows with insulated ones, closed up the holes in the second floor and demolished the floating kitchen island in the center of the space. They also added a new skylight for a light well/atrium Racké wanted; it allows a tiny indoor garden, adjacent to the compact master suite that hugs the south wall in the rear.

“When people enter rooms, they animate them, and yet stairs, where you’d see the most movement, are usually hidden within a stairwell,” Ogrydziak says. “So we thought a new staircase needed to be revealed.”

It became the principal and most dramatic design feature, and because of its design and scale, it can be admired from virtually any angle.

Ogrydziak’s pair of stacked metal and wood stairs — one between the two floors and the other to the roof — is spotlit by skylights overhead. The stairs appear skeletal because they have no risers and their floating wood treads are like vertebrae attached to a central welded steel spine. Each length has a landing in the middle that makes the climb less steep,

Facing page: A vintage wood die mold mirror is a nod to the board-formed concrete building’s industrial past. The new steel-and-wood staircase was designed by architect Luke Ogrydziak to be as thin-lined as possible, with open risers, and railings of metal mesh. This page, top: Viewed from the ground-floor bedroom, which has a foldaway front wall, the staircase seems skeletal. A new light well allows an atrium garden. Right: In the den, Racké’s salon-style art gallery includes Cuban art, with a photograph of dancer Adrian Fernandez Milanes. Next to a midcentury Floating Cube chair by Milo Baughman sits a Lumina Multi X Light by Yaacov Kaufman.

In one corner of the cavernous, open-plan living area with front-facing windows draped by Susan Lind Chastain, a bright orange sofa by Milo Baughman is combined with a reupholstered vintage curved sectional sofa. A 1970s French brass-and-glass coffee table by Pierre Vandel rests on a silk-and-wool rug from DeSousa Hughes; side tables and lamps are from a Paris flea market; a 1961 abstract canvas is by San Francisco artist John Axton.

Opposite: Between the stairwell and kitchen is a guest room encased in wood, with translucent clerestory windows; against the railings, a green Murano glass lamp sits between a pair of Antonio Citterio–designed chairs from Flexform. This page: An L-shaped corner kitchen wraps around the bedroom. Above its marbled-clad counter hangs a yellow painting by Nicole Hayden. An existing skylight lights up the dining area where vintage chairs from Almond and Co. surround a custom walnut table; the painting is by Sparky Campanella.

and the railings are made of gossamer webbed-steel netting that allows “natural light to cascade down to the ground floor,” the architect says.

This secondary light well’s landings also act as platforms for viewing art made by friends that hangs salon-style against the west wall dividing the first-floor media/family room from the garage.

“From the landings, you also get a sense of the entire three-story-high volume of the loft. It has a kind of Roman nobility that you only get to see in existing industrial spaces like these,” Ogrydziak says.

To keep the public areas on the second floor open-plan as well, a guest suite is enclosed in a wood-clad cube in back, situated directly above the master suite. It has no windows, but light cascades down into the small room from one of the original skylights, and a band of translucent clerestory windows lets some of that light leak into the new kitchen, right next to the guest room, in the southwest corner. For more natural light in this galley kitchen that has no upper cabinets, “we could have made the whole guest room of translucent glass, but we had to economize,” Ogrydziak says.

Racké has made trompe l’oeil his stock-in-trade, but he does “appreciate consistent fields of real materials and natural patterns,” Ogrydziak observes. Accordingly, a marble-wrapped service counter between the kitchen and dining space is without a typical cantilevered shelf for dining so it seems monolithic; in the bathrooms, there are solid marble slab shower walls and floors; and the rest of the loft has genuine reclaimed oak floors, with a textured finish.

Still, there are several faux surfaces you don’t immediately see: subtle Venetian plaster veneers in the bathrooms, custom-finished oak wood paneling wrapping the bedroom cube on the second floor, and trompe l’oeil finishes that transform stainless-steel stair parts into forged iron.

“There is some trickery up on the roof too,” the architect says. For the roof deck, accessed through a new skylit and glazed bulkhead, new structural parts and steel planters are painted with drip stains, to simulate weathering.

In the roof garden, by landscape architect Katherine Webster, there is also a grid of real ipe wood pavers from Beronio Lumber, along with beds of river rock. Webster designed some strategically placed screens of both translucent white acrylic and corrugated galvanized steel, to ward off west and north winds, without obstructing views, facing east.

Under a shade canopy designed by Racké, Susan Chastain, who made diaphanous linen drapes for the interiors, also made lime green cushions for outdoor furniture that prompted Webster to plant lime green succulents in the beds around an outdoor kitchen.

It all took five years to complete, but Racké loves to see the loft at different times of day quite literally in a new light.

“Everything seemed so much darker before we got started,” he says.

“We kept the rooms small so we could celebrate the untouched concrete wall surfaces,” the sleight-of-hand artist adds. “What we didn’t expect was this genuinely breathtaking, luminous space.” n

“

RETRIEVING THE LOST FLOOR SPACE AND, BECAUSE THE BUILDING LACKED A YARD, ADDING A ROOFTOP GARDEN ON THE SUNNY ROOF BECAME HIS PRIORITIES.”

Opposite: A new sky-lit bulkhead above the stairwell allows access from the living area to a roof garden designed by Katherine Webster that, like its furniture from Room & Board, is evergreen. This page: Under an existing skylight (also visible in the garden) is the compact guest suite encased in wood faux-finished by Willem Racké Studios; its translucent clerestory windows leak precious daylight into the kitchen. The black and white photograph is by Patrick Viersen Brown.

Set atop a knoll in Ross, this 1903 Arts and Crafts–style estate was designed to embrace the views of Mount Tam and Mount Baldy but the colorful, sun-filled rooms were not part of the attraction for Putterman.

FADING INTO BLACK

CONVENTIONAL WISDOM SUGGESTS THAT BRIGHT WHITE WILL UPDATE A TIRED HOME, BUT YAÉL PUTTERMAN TOOK THE OPPOSITE APPROACH WHEN GIVING A NEW LOOK TO A HISTORIC ESTATE IN ROSS.

BY SARAH LYNCH PHOTOGRAPHS BY DAVID DUNCAN LIVINGSTON

IN 1903, ALEXANDER F. MORRISON, a notable San Francisco attorney, built himself a 6,700-squarefoot home in the Laurel Grove neighborhood of Ross. Originally set on 40 acres, the sprawling Arts and Crafts–style house was built on a hill facing south to embrace the sunlight and views of Mount Tamalpais. With terraced formal gardens and a ground-level library designed to house Morrison’s extensive book collection (since donated to the dedicated Morrison Library at UC Berkeley), the property was an early example of the Marin lifestyle at its finest.

Fast-forward 110 years and this gently updated estate (downsized to a lot of 1.4 acres) is about to undergo a dramatic makeover. The formal rooms and gracious proportions remain, along with Arts and Crafts details including coffered ceilings, large wood-burning fireplaces (four of them), elaborate wainscoting and crown moldings. But other original details feel outdated: multiple stairwells connecting the four levels of the house and formal rooms that can’t accommodate today’s busy families.

Enter Yaél Putterman. A modernist to the core, the Israeli-born designer and entrepreneur confesses she was not interested in living in this house when she first saw it. Over the past 22 years, she has transformed nearly a dozen homes between the Bay Area and Israel, and at the time she had just staged-to-sell a low-slung midcentury gem on Shady Lane in Ross. After the sale of a previous residence, and with little more than two weeks to find her next home, Putterman reconsidered the Morrison estate and was lured by the promise of all that space.

“It was not my style at all,” says Putterman, who needed enough space for her family, including three children, then ages 8, 11 and 13. “It was very traditional and every room was painted a different color — blue, red, yellow. I couldn’t really see my life there, but the rooms were large and I felt like I could do something different with that.”

Working under her tight deadline, Putterman started the clock on a full face-lift of the house — walls were painted, floors stained, surfaces replaced and fixtures swapped out. Putterman chose varying shades of gray and pure white for most of the walls but, notably, she went all-out for her two

In the classically coffered living room, a quotation is boldly stenciled in white on the matte black wall. It’s a remark by fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent justifying his love of black. In addition to representing fine artists at her gallery in downtown Ross, Putterman has been known to paint her own canvases to enliven an empty wall.

Inspired by the sleek steeland-glass buildings in her native Israel, Putterman painted the traditional dining room in cement gray and outfitted it with a black lacquer dining table and white leather chairs. Inset: The original glass cabinets of the library once housed the owner’s collection of 10,000 books, which were donated in 1928 to UC Berkeley and became the Alexander F. Morrison Memorial Library.

favorite rooms — the living room and the ground-level library. The latter, lined in Morrison’s original glass-fronted bookcases, was given an all-over high-gloss coat of black, while the living room received a more matte black treatment that extends to the ceiling, where it contrasts against the wooden beams in the coffers.

“I’ve always done black in smaller doses, but these rooms were large enough to handle all-black walls,” says Putterman, who also painted the kitchen’s island black and the other cabinets a high-gloss gray. Citing influences that range from her Jerusalem childhood and the vibrancy of Mediterranean cooking to Yves Saint Laurent and the latest offerings at the Milan Furniture Fair, Putterman describes her contemporary style as more a mentality than an aesthetic.

“There is constant building in Israel; almost everyone starts from scratch when they buy a new home,” she explains. “And everything is made of concrete, plaster and stone so it feels very contemporary and strong. I wanted this house to feel

“ I WANTED THIS HOUSE TO FEEL LESS FORMAL AND MORE CUTTING EDGE.”

While the kitchen (below) was simply given a quick coat of black paint, the space that was formerly the family room was redesigned to cater to Putterman’s passion for entertaining. The media cabinets were commandeered for serving pieces, the seating was pushed aside in favor of a comfortable dining table and space was given for the chef to move seamlessly between guests.

less formal and more cutting edge. I also love to cook and entertain and it just didn’t accommodate that life.”

To open up the entertaining potential, Putterman turned the existing family room into a giant extension of the kitchen, complete with the enormous gray lacquer island, which was shipped from Israel, where it had been custom-designed for her last home there. Throughout, a collection of similarly streamlined and sleek European furnishings sets a decidedly contemporary tone in this turn-of-the-21st-century home.

“It just needed to feel more relevant,” Putterman says. “The house hadn’t been touched in 15 or 20 years, but even if it wasn’t outdated I still might have done most of the work. I need to make every home a place I love to be — I need to put my stamp on it.”

She now makes her signature “stamp” available to the public through Yaél Studio, her new hybrid studio/art gallery in the center of Ross. n

In the foyer, entered through the front garden, textiles and mementos from the owners’ travels in South America and Africa are juxtaposed against a cardboard Wiggle side chair by Vitra, designed by architect Frank Gehry in 1972. Facing page: San Francisco landscape architect Katherine Webster simplified the front garden at this St. Helena home. Beds of gravel and grasses form an asymmetrical grid around an existing maple tree. Poured-inplace cement pavers lead to the front door. Inside, an old fireplace is clad with blackened steel; a doorway leads to bedrooms.

Country Colors

A NAPA DESIGNER DEBUTS HIS BEST WORK AT HOME, ALONGSIDE A GARDEN BY KATHERINE

WEBSTER.

BY ZAHID SARDAR

PHOTOGRAPHS BY MARIKO REED

DAVE MCMULLEN, NEWLY RETIRED FROM a decades-long corporate law career, recently resolved to become an interior designer, but it wasn’t a quixotic decision.

“I always tweaked the interiors of our homes in the past,” the intrepid 55-year-old says. “And then, after we hired interior designers Carolyn Einstein Dewar and Diane Einstein to reimagine our San Francisco home and explored design showrooms with them, I began to think of it seriously.”

However, it wasn’t until three years ago, when McMullen and husband Edward Ortiz found an L-shaped 1940s ranch house in St. Helena during one of their frequent jaunts to Napa, that McMullen made his debut.

The 1,500-square-foot, single-story roost, with peaked roofs and a picket fence, was a manageable size that suited the small-town atmosphere.

“We loved quaint yet sophisticated St. Helena, where you can ride a bike to the grocery store,” McMullen says, and nearing retirement, he thought their weekend hideout could become their permanent home.

Expanding the house and making the large backyard with a view of the Mayacamas Mountains a place for family gatherings became an imperative.

Out front McMullen painted the siding gray and restored the windows, then focused most of his design acumen on a modest 500-squarefoot extension (achieved with the help of local space planner Carolyn Leonhardt) that made the home’s footprint rectangular and doubled the living space. New cedar siding in back is also gray, lightly charred in the Japanese Shou Sugi Ban manner, “but not as dark,” McMullen says.

The high-ceilinged extension in back with tall steel windows incorporates the old kitchen. The new open-plan kitchen, dining and living areas flow out to a deck, back garden and views of the Mayacamas Mountains.

During their travels over the years, the couple has gathered textiles from Mexico, Bolivia and South Africa and many esoteric objects, including taxidermy, which all appear inside amid modern classics such as Frank Gehry’s cardboard Wiggle chair and new custom furniture. “I like to layer textures and materials,” McMullen says.

For instance, in the front parlor, the old brick fireplace is wrapped with blackened steel, and in the two guest rooms toward the street that remain essentially unchanged, McMullen added unusual wallpaper. In one bedroom, a Timorous Beasties design depicting iguanas and pineapples is a moody backdrop for a leather headboard draped with a woman’s poncho from Oaxaca.

The tiny guest bathroom is like a camera obscura, lined with dark embossed Ann Sacks wall tiles. Since a mirror could not be attached to the wall, a mirror hangs from the ceiling

Webster laid a grid over the old back garden and enclosed the existing kidney-shaped pool in its own rectangular section. The new concrete and gravel hardscape has several level changes and steps lead down in sequence to a dining area, to the pool and to a vegetable garden from a widened deck off the living spaces and the master bedroom; a tall hedge lends privacy to the bedroom.

on a horse bridle, reflecting a light fixture from Coup D’Etat above a Carrara marble sink top.

To contrast with the original low-ceilinged scale of the front rooms, the new white-walled living/dining room, with its crisp Arcilinea island kitchen on one side and steel French doors, soars to a height of 12 feet.

Next to it, the master bedroom also opens onto a stepped terrace and garden created by San Francisco landscape architect Katherine Webster. It is relatively spare, accented with just a few handmade things to offset modern furniture from Design Within Reach.

“As far as I am concerned, back there the view is the star,” McMullen says. Redesigning the house to capitalize on wine country vistas was an obvious decision, but when it came to reconfiguring the modest 2,000-square-foot front garden and the larger 4,500-square-foot backyard occupied by old trees and a kidney-shaped swimming pool, the former city condominium dwellers were at a loss until Webster arrived.

“They were midway through construction and did not know if they could do anything with the yard and the pool without tearing it all out,” Webster recalls. “I told them they could.”

In one guest room, a Timorous Beasties wallpaper design depicting iguanas and pineapples is a moody backdrop; the leather headboard is draped with a poncho from Oaxaca. The guest bathroom has dark embossed Ann Sacks wall tiles; the mirror hangs from the ceiling on a horse bridle, reflecting a light fixture from Coup D’Etat. The sink top is of Carrara marble.

Now, although established trees that grew there still remain, new plantings, crushed granite and concrete paving better anchor the front and back gardens to the vineyard setting.

A horizontal-board boundary fence and soft and billowy grasses stand out against the charcoal gray building, and an asymmetrical composition of parallel beds and poured-inplace concrete pavers leading to the front door make the small front garden navigable during the winter. Old-fashioned “granny” camellias are gone, but “we saved the citrus trees and a Japanese maple,” Webster says.

In the back garden, “we wanted a fire pit and a place to sit by the pool or read a book outside the master bedroom, but Kate conjured up outdoor rooms that have made our home twice as big,” McMullen marvels.

Webster laid an imaginary grid over the yard to demarcate various sections for dining under an existing magnolia tree and for lounging by the back fence next to a kitchen garden; she also cordoned off the pool within its own rectangular concrete patio. Black powder-coated steel edging separates the gravel, grass and

crushed granite areas, and some boundaries are softened with cascading succulents and grasses in steel planters.

“I added several progressive planes as well to suggest movement,” Webster says. Starting at the top, the wide poured-in-place concrete terrace that abuts the lofty living room and master bedroom seamlessly steps down toward the pool area and the rest of the garden.

“Most of the plants are textural and lack flowers,” Webster says, because McMullen and Ortiz wanted a quiet, low-maintenance garden. They also used locally available, affordable materials, “but it is not just another garden with olive trees and rosemary in the country,” Webster says. The Chinese pistachio trees that existed there turn orange in the fall, and redwoods on the neighbor’s property add welcome woodland notes, even though their thirsty encroaching roots had to be surrounded with succulents in custom planters.

“Like any good room, a garden needs a focal point, and that was our secret,” Webster says. “With selective plantings and hardscape we framed views and the colors of the sky.” n

The side yard, planted with grasses and flanked by steel planters, leads to the pool.

Facing page: In the master bedroom, a Random Light of resin-soaked yarn, designed by Bertjan Pot for Moooi, floats above a bed in the middle of the room. French doors open to a new deck and views; steps lead down to outdoor dining areas, including a lounging section close to the back fence with a heated bench by Galanter & Jones.

The Tropics in Calıfornia

BY REED WRIGHT PHOTOGRAPHS BY SUZANNE BECKER BRONK

Designer Tim O’Shea sourced lush succulents, agaves, palms and bamboo around an existing pool; around the bend from it, a newly shored-up hillside garden overlooking Mount Tam has his fire table, made by Concreteworks; the polyethylene-and-steel garden furniture is by Kenneth Cobonpue.

“MY FATHER WAS A CONTRACTOR who painted murals on the walls of our home in the San Fernando Valley,” Barbara MacDonald, 64, who is now a Bay Area psychiatrist, recalls. “My mom grew up in Hawaii so there were exotic birds, trees and bamboo depicted. We had a real lava rock fireplace and slate floors.”

Fast-forward to the ’80s, when MacDonald and her psychologist husband Peter Howard moved into their L-shaped 1940s Kent Woodlands home. They were pleased that they had underground springs to keep the hillside property green even in the driest years. What they didn’t know was that the springs were also undermining their home. “Water was wicking into the walls,” MacDonald says.

To fix all that, they had to embark on a massive reconstruction in 2003, but they got to modernize the house, add bigger windows and bring in more light. However, the garden on the roughly one-acre property never quite recovered.

“Apart from the oak trees, there was just a crabgrass-y lawn in the front yard and a downslope with weeds in the back,” MacDonald says.

Then, about eight years ago, they decided to spring for six mature olive trees from Crown, a tree farm an hour north of Sacramento, and Marin-based Timothy O’Shea, who cut his gardening teeth at the Green Gulch Zen Center before studying landscape architecture at UC Davis, got to install them.

“Initially, we thought the project we would take on was so small in scope that we might not need a landscape designer,” MacDonald, who is a plant enthusiast, says. But as O’Shea, who has since co-launched the landscape design firm Green 17 Design (inspired by the Bay Area’s Zone 17 growing designation), laid out tantalizing possibilities, the project grew and they began to install a new garden.

“Their blacktop driveway, small parking lot and lawn looked pitiful,” O’Shea remembers. “We transformed it all.”

After the trees were in, a hedge was grown to screen off the cars; then a cascading fountain designed by artist Hugo McCloud went into the front yard, followed by a collection of large showy agaves. A terrace outside the pool house became home to palms and other exotic tropical species.

“Everything thrives there,” O’Shea says with amazement.

The final hurdle was on the southwest corner off the master suite that had wonderful views of Mount Tamalpais, “but the landscape was just rubble and weeds,” O’Shea says.

In went a retaining wall to shore up the hillside and also form an outdoor living space surrounded by lush succulents and Japanese Henon timber bamboo so that “the ridges of Mount Tam seem to float above the foliage. It is a sunset terrace they never had,” O’Shea says.

Together, O’Shea and MacDonald designed the first coffee table made of concrete and bronze by Concreteworks that doubles as a fire pit. Comfortable armchairs surround it, “so we can dine there on warm evenings,” MacDonald says.

Even though parts of it could succumb to frost without vigilant care, this finely balanced “tropical desert garden” that reflects Hawaii and Southern California is what MacDonald wanted. With Ascolano olive trees; Agave americana, celsii and angustifolia; other succulents, and barrel cacti, “we have painted in a desert,” she says. “But amid five varieties of bamboo, several palms and Agave attenuata, we fully feel the tropics.” n

“ THE RIDGES OF MOUNT TAM SEEM TO FLOAT ABOVE THE FOLIAGE.”

Hugo McCloud’s cascading fountain sculpture. Inset: In the foreground, one of MacDonald’s prized olive trees from Crown; In the background, towering Japanese timber, Oldham’s, textilis and evergreen golden bamboos on the downslope; in the beds, filifera, striata, ferox aloes; blue glow and Senecio “Schwartzkopf” agaves; and a variety of succulents including Senecio mandriliscae, Aeonium canariense, Euphorbia wulfenii and Euphorbia x martinii

BENCHMARKS

San Francisco’s Ben Frombgen designs the best seats in the house.

IF YOU’VE INDULGED in hipster coffee, craft beer or cocktails at popular Bay Area spots such as the Alembic and Pinhole Coffee in San Francisco, Drake’s Dealership in Oakland, or the cool new Arthur Mac’s Tap & Snack restaurant near the MacArthur BART station, it is likely that you’ve already encountered the work of San Francisco designer Ben Frombgen. Originally from Barker, New York, on Lake Ontario, Frombgen, 52, has been on a circuitous design journey that few know about.

“When I was a kid my family had a roadside stand and sold fruit and vegetables all summer long,” he recalls. His father had a machine shop he started as a teenager in his garage that eventually became Diversified Manufacturing, an operation in nearby Lockport that was big enough to handle projects for Los Alamos National Laboratory and international collaborations with Fuji Bikes of Japan. “It opened up a new world for me,” Frombgen says of growing up around the shop. After studying architecture at Virginia Tech and working with architects Steven Holl and Rafael Viñoly in New York, he came to San Francisco, stepped into architect Olle Lundberg’s steel workshop and atelier in Dogpatch and was besotted. “I was so at home among machines, I stayed there for nine years,” Frombgen says.

Another job for five years at Sagan Piechota Architecture led in 2008 to the next chapter of his career: the founding of an uncommon design/build practice called Bcooperative, specializing in interiors with built-in, portable/collapsible features for coffeehouses, bars, restaurants, and parklets replete with bike racks — all often graced with his signature motif: a distinctive bench or booth.

Architect Carlo Scarpa is Frombgen’s design hero, but the forms of Frombgen’s benches with high backs and raised arms, which help to form cocoons within open beer gardens and cavernous, loftlike restaurant interiors, often echo highbacked chairs by architect Frank Lloyd Wright that provided room-like enclosures within open-plan spaces.

Wood and steel — with the occasional introduction of leather, stone and tile for designs that call for it — are the key materials Frombgen likes to work with.

There was always steel, but “wood happened accidentally,” he says with a laugh. “I was offered a cache of wood in lieu of money for a design job and soon began to sell it and learned about the trade. Wood is my first collaborator.”

PHOTOS BY ADRIAN GREGORUTTI (OPPOSITE AND TOP): COURTESY BEN FROMBGEN (BOTTOM)

Opposite: The new Arthur Mac’s Tap & Snack near the MacArthur BART station in Oakland has Bcooperative designer Ben Frombgen’s extravagantly simple wood booths, tables and benches. Top: The same design idiom continues at the Alembic in San Francisco with tufted leather, stained wood and pressed glass details. Right: At Drake’s Dealership in Oakland a unique wall bench/booth with bracketed steel tables that have clip-on extensions for round tops.

Indeed, as his firm name implies, Frombgen collaborates not just with materials but with other companies too.

For instance, at the Alembic, he developed and enhanced an interior design by New York–based brand designer Kevin Landwehr. At Drake’s Dealership, an Oakland car-dealership-turned-restaurant remodeled by Flynn Architecture, Bcooperative also designed several distinctive seating solutions. Architects such as Baran Studio Architecture and Farm League Design and Management Group — the two firms that designed the shell where Bcooperative most recently inserted Arthur Mac’s Tap

Top: More wood and steel wall benches inside Arthur Mac’s, with attached stools and footrests. Above: Outside, in the courtyard at Drake’s Dealership, cocooning back-to-back seats with shared armrests.

& Snack pizza restaurant and beer garden in Oakland — rely on Frombgen’s custom booths to bring spaces alive.

Collaboration is key at every stage and Frombgen, who sometimes rides in on his bike, is so hands-on during fabrication and installation, he often gets mistaken for a contractor or carpenter.

“I always try to understand the site as an architect does but I also try to understand the builder. The site and builder are the same thing in my mind,” Frombgen says. “When I know how a builder works I can design for his building capabilities. It’s the stew we cook together that tastes best.”

Frombgen’s approach may seem oddly experimental, but it is remarkably efficient. For the Alembic, he interpreted Landwehr’s sketches for the bar and interior on site. He was able to alter the tufting for upholstery and assemble tiny wall moldings, the beer taps and the drip trays in real time by hand, “as if they were all fine jewelry,” Frombgen says.

“You can never do that sitting at a computer.” bcooperative.com n

Pine Street NATURAL INTERIORS

For a home in S.F.’s Buena Vista neighborhood, Frombgen combined cut and live-edge wood tops and seats with steel frames for a sculptural picnic table.

“Frombgen, who sometimes rides in on his bike, is so hands-on during fabrication and installation, he often gets mistaken for a contractor or carpenter.”

HORSE SENSE

San Francisco architect Julie Dowling rescues dilapidated stables in Marin with mathematical precision.

THE NICASIO RIDING CLUB that opened a year ago in Marin County is aiming for stardom, and with its fine trainers and modern design improvements to the buildings it occupies, its founders, architect Julie Dowling and program director Michele George, may succeed.

The two women, both in their 40s, happened to meet at a public riding stable where they were boarding their horses and soon discovered that they each sought a more convenient riding environment that offered a high quality of horse care and a comfortable after-riding club room. There wasn’t one.

Confident of attracting a community of riders who wanted a convivial après-ride atmosphere, Dowling and George leased seven acres to start their own club within an existing 38-acre “horse-property” in Nicasio that Dowling owns with her husband.

“Michele worked on the horse program, while I worked on the buildings,” the architect says.

Although the property’s rolling hills and hiking trails made the setting attractive, the notso-easy-to-come-by stables and farm buildings were essential to the plan. Several ramshackle buildings were repurposed — a toolshed is now a grain room and a large garage that housed farm equipment was converted into a hay barn — and enhanced with paint and durable materials to make upkeep easier.

However, the linchpin, a long 4,000-squarefoot barn, unchanged in shape or size, is where small and large improvements abound.

Outside, an exposed light bulb over the barn doors was replaced with a gooseneck pendant fixture that mitigates light pollution at night; the wide 2-inch-thick siding and the sliding barn doors were painted a uniform black. They

A Nicasio Riding Club regular walks down the rubber-clad aisle of the revamped sky-lit stables with her horse. Insets: The old stable interior; bird’s-eye view of the refurbished stable building and corrals.

are all the more striking minus ugly leaky windows on either side of them and the pipe-railfenced paddocks flanking the barn that were removed to allow for new landscaping. Large potted lime trees at the entrance are attractive sentinels, while, opposite the barn, Dowling tidied up simple weather-resistant corrugated steel canopies sheltering existing paddocks. There, and in the riding arenas, George recommended natural-fiber and sand footings instead of sand and aggregate to lend buoyancy and support underfoot.

Inside, in lieu of irregular horse stalls haphazardly divided by plywood and stretched plastic, Dowling mimicked the barn’s 12-foot structural grid and devised 12 equal 12-by-12-foot steel-frame-and-wood horse stalls — six on each side of an existing 14-foot-wide concrete aisle in the center. The aisle’s new black easy-to-wash rubber matting also provides a softer walking surface. The structural framing is painted black to contrast with the refurbished corrugated steel roof’s white insulated underside, and exposed light bulbs hanging from wires were replaced with a rhythmic enfilade of white industrial pendant lights.

Dowling’s new black storage trunks, horseblanket bars, bridle hooks and adjustable saddle racks in front of every rolling stall door, each of which sports a stainless-steel nameplate for the resident horse, look custom but are mostly off-the-shelf. An ineffable ingredient that adds to the transformation is, inside each stall, the scent of fresh pine wood shavings that the horses love to lie in.

For club riders and visitors, Dowling redecorated ill-used storage space at one end of the barn into an open-plan sitting room with new freestanding lockers tucked out of sight. Blownglass pendant lights above an island table, blackand-white art, wide plank laminated wood floors over the old concrete slab, and modern Ikea cabinets instead of funky redwood cupboards in the existing kitchen are also smart low-cost additions.

“It has become less about simply getting a horse to ride. Even when the weather is bad people want to linger, check emails and enjoy a cup of tea,” says George, who as a child in Cape Town frequented the Cape Hunt and Polo Club. “They have an extension of the riding experience of the kind you have after golf or skiing,” she adds. “That was our inspiration.” n

Top: The long 4,000-square-foot barn where 12 horses can be stabled at a time also contains a club room at the rear end. Sturdy new metal roofs, new landscaping and fresh charcoal black paint visually unify all the buildings on the property. Below: The sagging old barn; opposite the remodeled barn are refurbished paddocks.

SAN FRANCISCO (415) 551–3580

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Lost & Found in India

In Tamil Nadu, a Vedic-style retreat is restorative by design.

A kurta-clad guest strolls into mango groves at Maitreyi, a self-styled Vedic village where going off-line shortly after sundown is a virtue.

IN THE SHADOW of India’s Anaimalai Mountains that form the southern end of the Western Ghats range in Tamil Nadu, I arrived at Maitreyi, a secluded enclave named after a female sage, where I was instantly catapulted into a wonderland of ancient Indian life.

Despite the occasional cry of peacocks or two resident Brahmin priests’ sonorous ringing of temple bells, this green and orderly paradise invites meditation and introspection — whitewashed brick-and-wood buildings with broad verandas and red tile roofs sit amid stately coconut palms and flowering trees.

Maitreyi appears as if it has always been there. But it was only about eight years ago when co-founder Markus Dietl, now 63, launched the retreat on undeveloped acreage sandwiched between the forested ghats and the Aliyar River.

“It was ideal for the Vedic village we envisioned,” Dietl says.

Dietl is a disciple of the late Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the globe-trotting guru who more than 50 years ago revived ideas from the Vedas, the oldest Hindu sacred texts, for living a deeper spiritual life, introducing transcendental meditation (TM) to the West and influencing the likes of the Beatles, Buckminster Fuller and Deepak Chopra. The Maharishi died in 2008 in Vlodrop, the Netherlands, where, oddly, he last lived on the forested grounds of a former Franciscan monastery.

Opposite, clockwise from top left: The driveway into Maitreyi is lined with yellow flowering Tecoma stans shrubs, common in India but native to the Americas; a view of Maitreyi’s idyllic campus with the Western Ghats towering above; tea estates high up in the ghats on the way to Valparai; a guest enjoys a henna demonstration at Maitreyi. Above: One of two resident priests gathers marigolds and other flowers in Maitreyi’s garden for a puja ritual.

That’s when Dietl — who first encountered the worldwide TM movement during the 1970s in Munich, Germany, where he was a university student fully realized the notion of a Vedic retreat in the heart of India, “in harmony with the forgotten laws of nature,” he says.

“I was teaching TM all over India for a long time and thought that a fixed place to manifest the principles we taught was a good idea,” Dietl recalls. The plan grew to include a meditation and yoga center and buildings for the practice of Vedic Ayurveda, aka the healing science of life.

With eight collaborators, three of them now also Maitreyi directors, Dietl, who grew up in the Italian Alps, considered several northern options, including a village outside Kolkata, before they found their dream spot near the Aliyar dam and the border of Kerala.

They gradually developed it with the help of architect Prabhat Poddar of the Sri Aurobindo ashram in Pondicherry, just south of Chennai, where Vedic building forms abound, but few in such organized profusion as at Maitreyi.

According to Vedic tenets that include Vastu principles (a kind of Indian feng shui), Poddar drew a surface grid that charts underground negative and positive electromagnetic forces; permanent brick or stone columns demarcate the intersections of this invisible energy grid

that are thought to be ill suited to the presence of buildings and people.

According to Dietl, Vastu ideas were mostly lost in India until their recent revival, thanks to advocates like Poddar.

“We need to live again in accordance with nature. When that knowledge is lost, there is a danger,” Dietl says. “The pillars we erected at the grid crossings are to remind us not to ever sit or sleep there.”

On five acres with the best views of the mountains, Poddar laid out his square mandala-shaped plan for up to 25 roughly 500-square-foot freestanding brick, stone, wood and plaster cottages for guests and caretakers, a 3,500-square-foot meditation center, massage rooms, a combined office and store, and a second-floor cafe above a utility shed. On the rest of Maitreyi’s 20 acres abutting this assemblage are an organic potager garden, coconut palm and fruit orchards, and a teak grove interspersed with a few sandalwood trees, all fertilized with manure from the goshala (cowshed/dairy) built close to a banana plantation.

“The purpose of setting up a permaculture environment like this is to help others to also understand and implant it in their lives,” Dietl says.

Once a week, guests, many from Europe and the United States, stay for at least a month and

Clockwise from top left: In the silence at Maitreyi, co-founder Markus Dietl leads guests in a TM exercise on the auditorium veranda; a typical Vedic-style guest cottage with an interior courtyard that divides the single-story cabin from the bathroom above, which is a first-floor terrace; Dietl at the rooftop cafe.

“We need to live again in accordance with nature. When that knowledge is lost, there is a danger.”

PASSES ON

FEATURING PERFORMANCES BY

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Angel Blue

Stéphane Denève

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are treated to an informal lecture on the practicality of Vastu principles. A walk around the estate brings to life the assets of its fields and its mandala plan, and the natural logic of its structures designed by Kollam-based architect Niranjan Das Sharma.

For example, “because door openings are like funnels, they are centered on the building facade and have double doors that open inside to allow energy to flow in evenly,” Dietl says. Cross-ventilation is a given, thanks to window placements.

Despite the impressive scale of Maitreyi’s largest so-called “earth-energy” buildings, which deliberately have no air-conditioning, Dietl says they are economical; their showy carved Rajasthan sandstone columns seem lavish but actually cost a lot less than the expensive hardwood used in some areas to weather a South Indian monsoon. The functional, comfortable interiors are decorated with elegant locally handmade furnishings. Currently, Dietl, inspired by Poddar, is also experimenting with low-cost geodesic-style domes composed of ultrathin shells of brick that will someday serve as additional Ayurveda treatment rooms.

Speaking of Ayurveda, it “was forgotten even in South India before Maharishi popularized it in the 1980s,” Dietl says. “He was interested in bringing ancient ways back and in creating a scientific platform.”

Nowadays, most spa-goers around the globe know about Ayurveda, even though traditionally it was more than a spa treatment. “Shirodhara (dripping oils or milk onto the

forehead) is powerful and it can do harm if wrongly administered,” Dietl cautions.

Accordingly, Maitreyi also has a resident Ayurveda expert, the young Dr. Abilash Anand, who is in his early 30s. He was guided by one of the Ashta Vaidya families of Trichur, Kerala, who are among the last hereditary South Indian vaidyas or doctors and custodians of ancient herbal secrets. He and his wife, Dha-

A weaver at Appachi Eco-Logic Cotton mills.

nusree, who is also a vaidya, greet guests at the Maitreyi clinic building and discuss a person’s health in detail before prescribing treatments, which can include detoxifying panchkarma therapies. “We only do traditional abhyanga (oil baths) and it is not a universal wellness treatment,” Anand warns. “If you have a flu or fever, and if something is amiss in the body, it won’t readily absorb the oil.”

Indeed, Maitreyi’s every aspect is carefully prescribed, including the mildly spiced garden-fresh food, which is strictly vegetarian, devoid of garlic and onions, and served in traditional-style metal dishes (albeit shiny stainless steel) in the large dining hall at fixed mealtimes only. A plant program further educates guests and patients on how to identify, grow and use herbs and plants for aromatherapy.

During the day, after yoga salutations to the rising sun or a session of TM on the center’s veranda, or in between Ayurveda treatments, volunteering in the organic gardens, or sipping coconut water at the cafe, guests can go to nearby Pollachi to visit the 11th-century Samathur Shiva temple or see the weaving of textiles at organic Appachi Eco-Logic Cotton mills; watch a sari-wearing demonstration or a folk dance before a puja ritual; or drive up into the ghats to visit breathtaking tea estates around Valparai. On the latter excursion one afternoon, the rare Nilgiri tahr, a horned goat antelope, appeared along a vertiginous roadway to the top — an experience that’s definitely transcendent, in broad daylight, with one’s eyes wide open.

By contrast, isn’t transcendental meditation more like a deep sleep?

“No, meditation is the opposite of sleep,” Dietl says, with unusual emphasis and perhaps a little irony. “Meditation is a deeper rest but you are fully alert. It is an awakening. You find your way there with your eyes closed and by concentrating on an inner sound.” maitreyivedic.in n

Stroub Construction is a builder of exceptional and unique residences that require in depth attention to detail. The combination of exceptional workmanship and professionalism at a fair price is what company president Stephen Stroub attributes to his success.

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At Maitreyi, a peacock pauses on a roof; sari-wearing instructors.

BY REED WRIGHT IN BLOOM

FLOWER POWER

CELEBRATE THE SUMMER.

In San Francisco, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love, designer Jarrod Baumann of Zeterre Landscape Architecture rocks and rolls with hardy perennials that will weather periods of rain and drought. Two standouts, also great for cut flowers, include California Leucospermum cordifolium

“California Sunshine” / Pincushion Protea, with long-lasting yellow otherworldly blossoms, which thrives even in foggy coastal locations; and, for textural interest, the spiky deer- and rabbit-resistant Eryngium planum “Blue Glitter” / Sea Holly, with thistle-like blue flowers that have showy seed heads birds and butterflies love. zeterre.com Their surreal aesthetics are complemented by handmade French Astier de Villatte tableware found at San Francisco’s Sue Fisher King store, including the milky white glazed terra-cotta Grand Chalet soup and dinner plates, $60–$140; Petulla tumblers, $105; and Rocaille vase, $290. suefisherking.com

Home is so much more than a house. Its meaning is different for everyone. The concept is an evolving one; often not fully describable or conscious. It encompasses our past, but assuredly, is not final. We consider our greatest value to be the dialogue we establish with Clients, to create living places with meaning and joy; houses to come home to.

Michael Harlock A.I.A. Residential Architecture New & Remodel

The Land Collaborative

RESOURCES

Did you see something you like in one of our feature stories? This handy resource guide will tell you who made the major pieces in our pages, what type of item it is and where to find it.

CONVERSATIONS WITH ART

INTERIOR DESIGN Stephan Jones, Stephan Jones Interiors, stephanjones.com

LIVING ROOM Custom walnut daybed, Hardesty Dwyer & Co., hardestydwyer.com; upholstered in F. Schumacher, Montauk weave/ linen, fschumacher.com. Cocktail table, reclaimed beam and steel table, Chris French, cfrenchmetal.com. Vintage Danish walnut floor lamp, DeAngelis. Steel table, Chris French, cfrenchmetal.com. Steel pivot door and shelves, Francis Mill and Chris French. Plaster lamp, Coup D’Etat, coupdetatsf.com. Drapery material, rialto/natural, Corragio, coraggio.com. Kitchen counter stool, NWBLK. Kitchen Cabinetry, Henrybuilt, henrybuilt.com DINING

ROOM Custom Walnut Banquet, Hardesty Dwyer. Chair and banquet upholstery, bullish/ pebble, Mimi London, mimilondon.com. Vintage scissor leg chairs, Gibson Showroom, garygibson.com. Travertine Table, Italian 1970s, attributed to Angelo Mangiarotti, roarkmodern. com. STUDIO Chair, Augusto Bozzi Wingchair, Italian, Circa 1950s, Coup D’Etat, upholstered in Glant, couture tweed/cocoa, glant.com.

Drapery material, rialto/natural, Corragio. Steel

Shelves and Sliding Panel, Chris French. Studio Millwork, Henrybuilt. Lamp made from air filters, designed by Benjamin Winter.

Lounge Chair, American midcentury, walnut framed, Habité LA, habitela.com. Fabric, great plains, French press/unbleached. BEDROOM

Lounge Chair, American midcentury, walnut framed, Habité LA. Fabric, great plains, French press/unbleached, hollyhunt.com. Drapery Material, Corragio, rialto/natural. Headboard panel, Hardesty Dwyer. Headboard fabric, Pembroke/Bergamot, Rogers & Goffigon, rogersandgoffigon.com. Pivoting plywood dressing room, Chris French & Francis Mill. Hidden storage unit, steel shelves for eyeglass collection, Chris French.

WILD THINGS

INTERIOR DESIGN Jeff Schlarb, Jeff Schlarb Design, jeffschlarb.com

LIVING ROOM Rug, Lawrence of La Brea, lawrenceoflabrea.com. Fireplace, Diamata stone slabs. Light fixture, Linden chandelier, from The Future Perfect, thefutureperfect.com. Bar chair, Klismos, Scala Luxury, scalaluxury. com. DINING ROOM Console, Noir, noir

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furniturela.com. Mokum fabric on dining chairs, James Dunlop Textiles, jamesdunloptextiles. com. KITCHEN Chandelier, Jean de Merry

Lumiere light fixture, jeandemerry.com. Gaggenau cooktop and oven, custom powder-coated handles, gaggenau.com. POWDER

ROOM Custom cabinetry wallpaper, spear stripe greys on pearl, Timorous Beasties Wallpaper, timorousbeasties.com. Light fixture, Arteriors, arteriorshome.com. MASTER

BEDROOM Side tables, Bungalow 5, bungalow5.com. Lamp, Arteriors. Light fixtures, Currey and Co., curreycodealers.com.

ROCK STEADY

INTERIOR DESIGN Holly A. Kopman, Holly A. Kopman Interior Design, hollyakopman.com

ENTRY Rug, Silk Sari, Stark Carpets, stark.com. Console, Harlow, Made Goods, madegoods. com. LIVING ROOM Console, vintage, Coup D’Etat, coupdetatsf.com. Wallcovering, grass cloth with metallic ground, Donghia, donghia. com. DINING ROOM Wall mural, Flavor Paper, flavorpaper.com. Chandelier, custom design, Holly A Kopman Interior Design, hollyakopman. com, fabricated by Mary Ravelli, One Off Furniture, glass blown by Jess Wainer, jesswainer.com. Dining table, custom design, Holly A Kopman Interior Design, supplied by Evan Shively, base fabricated by Mary Ravelli. Vintage Lugano chairs with chrome sled base, covered in aqua velvet, Holly Hunt outdoor fabric, hollyhunt.com. LIVING ROOM Teal tufted sofa custom upholstery by Patricia Edwards, patriciaedwards.com. Teal and metallic grass cloth, Donghia. Wingback chair, Lee Industries, Lee Jofa, leeindustries.com, covered in Kelly Wearstler truffle onyx fabric, kellywearstler.com. Sisal rug with leather edge binding, Stark Carpet, starkcarpet.com. Ceiling pendant, Arteriors, arteriorshome.com. Cement top coffee table with weathered elm base, custom design, Holly A Kopman Interior Design, with Big Daddy’s Furniture and Buddy Rhodes Concrete, buddyrhodes.com. Chocolate mohair swivel chair, Coup D’Etat. Sisal rug with leather edge binding, Stark Carpet, starkcarpet.com. POWDER ROOM Vessel Sink, Amberstone. Pendant lighting, Bocci, bocci.ca. Carved wood mirror, Arteriors. MASTER BEDROOM Velvet mocha headboard, custom design, Holly A Kopman interior Design. Upholstery, Patricia Edwards. Bedspread, Suzani, vintage. Vellum nightstand, brushed brass nailheads, custom design Holly A Kopman Interior Design.

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RESOURCES

THE REAL DEAL

INTERIOR DESIGN Willem Racké, Willem Racké Studio, willemrackestudio.com

ENTRY STAIRCASE Industrial wood die mold converted into a mirror, vintage, American Garage, americangarageantiques.com.

ENTRY

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10am-6pm, Tues - Sat 1504 Bryant Street, 2nd Floor San Francisco, CA 94103 • Free Parking (415) 861-5004 • Beressi.Fabrics@gmail.com

SEATING AREA Chairs, Antonio Citterio for Flexform, flexform.it. Vintage Murano glass lamp. Table, Johnathan Browning, jonathan browninginc.com. LIVING ROOM Silk and wool rug, De Sousa Hughes, desousahughes.com. Orange sofa, Milo Baughman. Drapes, Susan Lind Chastain, susanchastain.com. BEDROOM Chair, B&B Italia, bebitalia.com. Bedding, Restoration Hardware, restorationhardware. com. Custom Ottoman and sofa. Moroccan rug. KITCHEN AND DINING AREA Vintage Chairs, Almond and Co. Murano Scavo Ragnetela glass plate on table. Paneled wall, Martino Interiors, martinointeriors.com. Vintage pendant lamps. Knoll stools, knoll.com. Marble kitchen counters by True Stone, truestone.com. Reclaimed chattercut oak floors by Trojan Wood Floors, trojanwoodfloors.com. MEDIA ROOM Chair by Milo Baughman. Lumina Multi X Light by Yaacov Kaufman, yaacovkaufman.com.

ROOFTOP / STAIRWAY Outdoor furniture, Room & Board, roomandboard.com. Safavieh outdoor rug, safavieh.com. Modular decking from Beronio Lumber, beronio.com. Landscape Design, Katherine Webster, webstermla.com.

FADING INTO BLACK

INTERIOR DESIGN Yaél Putterman, Yaél Studio, yaelstudio.com

Satish GUPTA

Shoichi IDA

JU Ming

LI Huayi

Mayumi ODA

Toko SHINODA

Kazuaki TANAHASHI

Yee

other artists in the Collection

LIVING ROOM Grey lounger, Jonathan Adler, Lampert Lounger, jonathanadler.com. Black coffee table, Zeus Noto, Max & Moritz low table, zeusnoto.com. Black-and-white cowhide rug and hair on hides, Hair on Hides black/ white brindle, S.H Frank Leather, shfrankleather. com. Gold vase, Jonathan Adler. Grey rabbit hair decorative pillows, Anthem, anthemsf. online. Gold bowl, large gold metallic pinch bowl, Jonathan Adler. Black-and-white lacquered box, Yaél Studio, yaelstudio.com.

LIVING ROOM / PHOTO 2 Gold metallic giant belly vase and gold bowl, Jonathan Adler. Black-and-white chess game set, Yaél Studio.

LIVING ROOM / PHOTO 3 Black wall paint, Benjamin Moore, Jet Black 2120-10, benjamin moore.com. Black-and-white paintings, Yaél Studio. Black Barcelona chairs, Knoll, dwr.com. Glass side table, Cassina, LC10-P Square low table, dwr.com. White lacquered–and-chrome frame console table, Minotti, minotti.com. White sectional sofa, Shabby Chic, Simple

The gallery exhibits museum quality works by notable artists including:

LUI Shou-kwan, Hong Kong, 1919-1975

Sectional, shabbychic.com. DINING ROOM Grey wall paint, Benjamin Moore, Gravestone 1475. Black lacquered dining table designed by Yaél Studio. White leather dining chairs designed by Yaél Studio. Nickel broom light pendant, Brand Van Egmond, brandvanegmond.com. Gold metallic lantern ground vase and lantern vase, Jonathan Adler. OFFICE Black glossy paint, Benjamin Moore, Black 30980. Tobacco chairs, Knoll, Brno Flat bar chair, knoll.com. Cream desk chair, Alias, rollingframe + tilt task chair 444, alias.design. Tobacco sofa and armchairs, Cassina, LC2 Petit Modele three-seat sofa and LC3 Grand Modele armchairs, Design Within Reach. Hair on Hide Rug, S.H Frank Leather. Black stained hardwood floors, Rode Bros., rodebros.com. KITCHEN Oil base black paint on island base, Benjamin Moore, Black 30980. White Carrara marble, Da Vinci Marble, davincimarble.com. Bar stools, Shin & Tomko Azumi, LEM flat bar chairs, Design Within Reach. KITCHEN / PHOTO 2 Oil base grey paint on shelving, Benjamin Moore, Chelsea Gray oil base paint. Gray wall paint, Benjamin Moore, Chelsea Gray HC-168. Black painted stripe on floor, Benjamin Moore, black oil base paint 30980. White leather dining chairs, Yaél Studio. Crystal chandelier, Anthologie Quarett, Cellula chandelier, interior-deluxe.com. White exposition chair and ottoman, Advanced Interior Design, advancedinteriordesigns.com. Hair on hide rug, S.H Frank Leather. Black and white Mongolian pillows, Krimsa Fine Rugs & Decor, krimsa.com.

COUNTRY COLORS

INTERIOR DESIGN Dave McMullen, McMullen & Co LLC, mcmullenandco.com

FRONT PORCH Chairs, Louise Mann, Martin Showroom, martinshowroom.com. Pillow, Zak and Fox, zakandfox.com. Petrified wood stool with metal band, Andrianna Shamaris, andriannashamarisinc.com. Bikes, Shinola Detroit and Bowery Lane Bicycles, shinola.com. Ceramic bell on rope, M Quan Studio, Lawson-Fenning, lawsonfenning.com. LIVING

ROOM Sofa, Como sectional chaise, Design Within Reach, dwr.com. Moroccan pillows on sofa, Tazi Designs San Francisco, tazidesigns. com. 1970s chrome and glass coffee tables, Coup D’Etat, coupdetatsf.com. Side chair, Frank Gehry Cardboard Wiggle Chair, Hive Modern, hivemodern.com. Brass cocktail table, Anjou Cocktail Table from Jonathan Browning available at De Sousa Hughes, desousahughes. com. Photograph above fireplace, Hablo Con Labios de Silencio by Luis Gonzalez Palma.

Serving Interior Designers and Architects, Celebrities and Fortune 500 CEO’s. Services include custom rug design, cleaning, repair, restoration, resizing and appraisals.

Come visit this refined and vetted collection for the discerning homeowner seeking the exceptional and the extraordinary.

Recently relocated to Mill Valley’s historic El Paseo building from the San Francisco Design Center after 35 successful years.

1 El Paseo Lane Mill Valley, CA 415.384.8261 • 415.309.3045 rhabib@alexandersrugs.com alexandersrugs.com

RESOURCES

Large striped rug, Martin Showroom, martin showroom.com. Red textile on floor and textile framed on wall above console table, Bolivian from designer’s trip to Bolivia. Console Table, Drifting Away console table, Coup D’Etat. Lamp on console table, Naomi Lamp, Arteriors, Plantation Design, plantationdesign.com. Metal cross in hallway, Oaxacan, from designer’s travels. Brass floor lamp, HD Buttercup, hdbuttercup.com. Brass and leather coat hooks, Anthropologie, anthropologie.com. Wicker basket and prayer beads, Hudson Grace, hudsongracesf.com. Textiles in wood basket, African. Kuba Cloth, from designer’s travels. DINING ROOM Steel windows and doors, Portella, portella.com. Light fixtures above dining table, Apparatus Lighting, Jay Jeffers-The Store, jayjeffers-thestore.com. Dining room table and chairs, HD Buttercup. Dining area rug, Moroccan, available at Tazi Designs, tazidesigns.com. Photo of Horse, Peter Samuels, Coup D’Etat. Stool, African. Pottery and bowls on dining table, Mexican and African from designer’s travels. Ceramic link chain on dining table, M Quan Studio, available at Lawson Fenning. Living area rug, Floor Design, floordesignrugs.com. Wingback chair, Plantation Design, plantationdesign.com, covered in Kelly Wearstler Trellis fabric, kellywearstler.com. KITCHEN Kitchen island and cabinets, Arclinea, wpasf.com. Counter stools, PAM Stools by Ligne Roset, lignerosetsf.com. Lights above kitchen island, Apparatus Lighting, Jay Jeffers-The Store. Wood insert in island and siding, Shou Sugi Ban, charred cypress from Delta Millworks, Austin, Texas, deltamillworks.com. BACK YARD Windows and doors, Portella. Sofa, chairs, dining table and poolside lounge chairs, RH, restoration hardware.com. Rope and metal dining chairs, Louise Mann available at Martin Showroom. Black-and-white pillows in vintage 1970s fabric, Coup D’Etat. Green Pillows, Postage Campaign, Zak and Fox, zakandfox.com. Black-and-white rattan poufs, L’aviva Home New York, l’aviva home.com. GUEST ROOM Wallcovering, Timorous Beasties available at De Sousa Hughes, desousahughes.com. Headboard and table lamp, RH. Textile on headboard, Woman’s Oaxacan poncho from designer’s travels. Textile on bed, Indian bedcover available at Hollywood at Home, hollywoodathome.com. Hair on Hide bench, HD Buttercup. Roman Shades, The Shade Store, theshadestore.com. Pillow, Smoke Pillow available at The Future Perfect, thefutureperfect.com. GUEST BATH Light fixture, Coup D’Etat. Floating counter and

Co-owners Rachel Blum and Jaclyn Blum-Guelfi

shelf, Carrara marble, custom. Wallcovering, Phillip Jeffries vinyl wall covering, De Sousa Hughes. Wall tile, Ogassian Penta 3D, Ann Sacks, annsacks.com. Mirror, custom and hung with horse bridal from Steed Fine Hoarding and Tack, steedfinehoardingandtack.blogspot.com.

Roman shade, The Shade Store. MASTER

BEDROOM Bed, Matthew Hilton available at The Future Perfect, thefutureperfect.com. Light Fixture, Moooi Random Light available at Design Within Reach. Rug, Moroccan from HD Buttercup. Club Chair, Arne Jacobson egg chair from HD Buttercup. Wall Mount Dressers, Shale wall mount dressers from Blu Dot, bludot.com. Pillows, Zak and Fox, New York, zakandfox. com. Blanket on bed, Hermes, hermes.com.

Textile on wall, African, from designer’s travels. Leather bag, Metropolitan Tote, Coach, coach. com. Doors and windows, Portella, portella. com. BACKYARD EATING AREA Dining table, Parsons outdoor teak dining table, RH. Dining chairs, rope and metal dining chairs by Louise Mann available at Martin Showroom, St. Helena, martinshowroom.com. Cast Stone lounge chairs in background, Evia Lounge Chair, Galanter & Jones, galanterandjones.com.

BACKYARD SEATING AREA Chaise lounge chairs, RH. Pillows, Coup D’Etat San Francisco. Siding, Shou Sugi Ban charred cypress from Delta Millworks, Austin, Texas. LANDSCAPE

ARCHITECT Katherine Webster for McMullen Garden Resources. Heated furniture, Galanter & Jones, galanterandjones.com. Planters, Green-form, green-form.com. Tables, Atelier Vierkant, ateliervierkant.com.

THE TROPICS IN

CALIFORNIA

GARDEN DESIGN Tim O’Shea, Green 17 Design, green17design.com

Garden chairs, Kenneth Cobonpue, kenneth cobonpue.com. Fire table, Concreteworks, concreteworks.com. Plants include the following. Bamboo: vivax, golden, oldhamii, henon and textilis. Agaves: celsius, Americana, blue flame, attenuata and angustifolia. Aloes: striata, ferox, filifera and blue glow. Senecios: “Schwarzkopf,” mandriliscae, canariense and vitalis. Euphorbias: wulfenii and martinii. Grasses: libertia, Japanese blood, miscanthus sinensis “morning light.” Palms: queen, brahea armata, Mediterranean fan and sago.

SAN FRANCISCO 2017

AUGUST 4 – 6

FORT MASON CENTER FOR ARTS & CULTURE

Anne Vincent

Glass, Jewelry, Furniture, Ceramics, Fashion Wearables, Fiber, Wood, Metal Craft like you’ve never seen before.

Bruno Kark

Kevin Costello

Laura Jaklitsch

Ryan Marne

Items pictured but not listed are from private collections, or no additional details are available.

RISE AND SHINE

Towers in San Francisco have always been indicators of a new awakening.

SAN FRANCISCO’S current financial and global strength may be measured by its ever-rising skyline. Even throughout the city’s booms and busts, its towers have always been a symbol of power.

The first of those, the Chronicle and Call buildings — skyscrapers in their day — withstood the 1906 quake. After fires ravaged the city, developers looked to the structures as models for more opportunities up in the clouds. The 1920s saw a number of neo-Gothic and gilded art deco high-rises sprouting up around Market Street; the Great Depression effectively put a halt to the frenzy, save for one outlier: the colorful Lillie Hitchcock Coit’s tower on Telegraph Hill, in North Beach.

A slim cylindrical column, 180 foot in diameter at the base, tapering to 32 feet, and 210 feet high, Coit Tower is one of the spotlit landmarks you can see on the right while entering the city from the Bay Bridge. It was built at the behest of Lillie Coit, an eccentric socialite who dressed as a man, roamed around with the city’s aristocratic volunteer firefighters, and on her deathbed called for the then-princely sum of $118,000 “to be expended in an appropriate manner for the purpose of adding to the beauty of the city which I have always loved.”

In the design melee that followed, San Francisco City Hall architect Arthur Brown Jr.’s vision for a tower won the day.

What followed was a symbol of an era rising from the ashes of the Great Depression, as well as an icon today often likened to a fire hose nozzle.

The art moderne column is indeed made of fireproof concrete, and many modern-day firefighters do view it as a shrine to their matron saint — although architects at the time denied any such visual connection.

In 1934, the tower’s labyrinthine interior displayed some of the first murals in the Public Works of Art Project, a precursor to the Works Progress Administration, which was the largest New Deal agency when created in 1935. The

large group of Coit Tower muralists took inspiration from Diego Rivera’s politically charged fresco-style murals, but also painted in egg tempera and oil on canvas.

Today the tower’s 27 murals — ascending three levels to depict the three themes of recreation, industry and commerce — remain relevant to the business and preoccupations of this city. Oddly, the murals on the upper levels were rarely viewable by the public, due to capacity limitations within the narrowing tower and its stairwells. But after a recent restoration, small groups of visitors are able to take guided tours of all the murals.

Coit Tower was eventually superseded by even taller buildings during the 1960s, and those structures marked the dawn of another forward-looking building boom lasting 20 years. After a 20-year hiatus following the height limits of the ’80s, we’re seeing another thrust upward, a cityscape of “hills” made of office towers and residential buildings south of Market, echoing the natural topography. Of them, the former Transbay Tower, renamed for anchor tenant Salesforce and soon to feature the tallest public art installation in the United States, is a new symbol — perhaps not as beloved as Coit’s — of a city always aspiring to greater heights.

Coit Tower offers a warm welcome to those entering San Francisco via either the Bay Bridge or one of the bay ferries.

Clockwise from above: The just completed Coit Tower stands stark against a gray sky prior to landscaping and removal of the entrance-level balustrade, between 1930 and 1935; “City Life,” by Victor Arnautoff; “California Agriculture,” by Maxine Albro.

Beth Martin ~ Martin Group

Photograph by Ken Hayden (@kenhaydenphoto)

RAWBEAUTY

RAWBEAUTY