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The Face of Hospitality A N L . A . M A ÎT R E D’ S E RV E S A S V I S UA L I N S PI R ATI O N I N T H E R I D LE YS’ O KC H O M E BY GR EG HORTON PHOTO BY C A R LI ECONOM Y
A S S U M E YO U H AV E N U M B E R E D prints by Chagall, Miró and Picasso, and assume you are trying to decide which piece of art you will use as the focal point for your den—the room that contains your beautiful home bar. Andrea and John Ridley have the prints, including Miró’s colorful, whimsical, explosively geometric “Exhibition ‘XXII Salon de Mai’” in the den, but their choice to anchor the room and have the place of prominence over the bar fell to a very different 20th-century figure. “Dimitri Dimitrov was the maître d’ at Sunset Tower Hotel in Los Angeles for many years,” John Ridley said. “It was a frequent haunt of mine when I lived there. Dimitri is world-renowned The Ridleys’ impressive art collection includes this abstract work by Joan Miró.
A framed print of Dimitri Dimitrov hangs over the Baker bar.
for his hospitality, and I thought he was appropriate to build the room and bar around.” In the Ridleys’ den, Dimitrov stares without apparent focus at a point in the room behind and to the right of the viewer. His gold Les Clefs d’Or pin and Tom Ford-esque eyewear are the only notable distractions from his impossible-to-read expression in the framed print of a Robert Landau photograph. “I had seen the photograph years ago, and I thought it captured Dimitri well, so I tracked down the photographer and bought a print,” John said. The Ridleys displayed him in a gilded frame, an excellent complement to the room’s warm woods and brass fixtures and accents. The room is bounded by beautiful raised paneling, but it’s saved from being too dark by well-placed splashes of brilliant colors: a beautiful spindle back chair to anchor the Miró, cerulean tufted leather wingback chairs in an eclectic grouping that also features an antique table with turned spindle legs and the open bar itself that cleverly leaves the colorful bottle labels exposed. All of the beautiful touches aside, Dimitrov is the central focus—not just because he has what people would call an interesting face, but because his presence there immediately inspires the question: Who is that? What sort of 18
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