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.

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

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

MAILING ADDRESS One Harbor Drive, Suite 208 Sausalito, CA 94965 Phone 415.332.4800 Fax 415.332.3048

BULK ORDERS

For information on bulk orders of SPACES, please call 415.332.4800.

SUBSCRIPTION INQUIRIES subscriptions@marinmagazine.com 818.286.3160

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