My first commission was a knee-high kids' kitchen for a day care center on Beacon Hill in Boston. That was 25 years ago (?). Since then I have scaled up operations to include built-ins and interior work of every description:
Kitchen & Bath
Library
Home Office
Custom Furniture
Floating Shelves
Fireplace Mantle & Bookcase Surround
Custom Closet
Living Room
Dining Room
Display
Working closely with architects and designers both here in the San Francisco Bay Area and in Boston I have learned the value of combining subtle innovation with existing architectural elements in order to preserve the integrity of the inherited space while at the same time providing for the client's current needs.
Not so subtle, perhaps, was a client's request, much earlier in my career, to incorporate
a pair of dueling pistols and his fraternity drinking mugs in a wrap-around wine rack (see Gallery 4). But then M.G. had a certain wit that you really had to experience to appreciate. . .
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More often (see Gallery 1) the challenge is to create a piece that looks like it belongs. A. L., whose schedule makes me dizzy just thinking about it, has always loved the Craftsman style and wanted a fireplace mantle with a wall-to-wall bookcase unit extending to either side of it. And she absolutely hated what she had-- a painted, ad hoc frame, virtually a square, that left her family room feeling cluttered and crowded.
The shelving and display space provided by an integrated mantle and bookcase design would obviously go a long way toward solving that problem. But more than that, for a household in continual motion, a place where its members and frequent guests would naturally want to gather-- where previously, the tendency was to fly through-- alters the rhythm.
Her daughters, A. L. tells me, secret away all kinds of stuff behind the hidden panel door (see Reclining Buddha, left).
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Our final design leans more toward Prairie than it does to Stickley. A drawing or two into the process it was apparent to both of us, A. L. and I, that a simple Craftsman knock-off would be too quaint, too obvious-- and would call too much attention to itself as a copy where the idea was to let the piece settle back and exist as part of the room as if it had always been there. And yet, upon closer inspection. . .
a series of step-backs provides visual interest , a configuration of our own invention but one that is still in keeping with the spirit of the American bungalow.
a series of step-backs provides visual interest , a configuration of our own invention but one that is still in keeping with the spirit of the American bungalow.
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The same care, craftsmanship and communication goes into every project I take on, whether that happens to be a coffee table or the floor-to-ceiling library standing behind it. Or for that matter, a tiny kitchen. . .
