Anglo-Continental elegance was the cynosure of the decorating world back in the 1980s. Acres of flowered chintz. Deep-dish sofas dripping bullion fringe. Ball-gown curtains tumbling onto romantically threadbare carpets. It was all about layering—ranks of paintings, clusters of blue-and-white porcelain—achieving the kind of noble clutter that often took generations to achieve. Located in a posh precinct of San Francisco, the interiors shown here aren’t old at all. Surprisingly enough, given the venerable atmosphere, they were completed just seven months ago for an energetic young couple who have lively children and a delightfully old-fashioned idea of how they want to live.
A Robert Silvers artwork hangs in the stairway. Farrow & Ball paint, Patterson Flynn Martin runner and carpet; bench in a Lee Jofa fabric.
“It’s so nice when somebody doesn’t want modern—the wife’s Pinterest is everything that’s in my wheelhouse,” says Miles Redd , the Manhattan decorator known for his carbonated personality and an encyclopedic knowledge of great tastemakers of the past, from the dashing Nancy Lancaster to the obscure Mrs. Guy Bethell, creators of the kinds of seriously pretty, eminently inviting rooms that the California couple had been pinning up and pining for.
Built in the early 1900s and renovated for the current owners by architect Gil Schafer, the San Francisco house has “a funny Norma Desmond vibe,” Redd says, largely because of the decades-old blanket of fig vine that threatens to smother the building’s redbrick façade. That vegetal extravagance is an outward manifestation of the livable opulence indoors—part English, part French, a soupçon of Venetian, and utterly comfortable.
“Antiques are such a good value today, and they’re great for a family lifestyle; they’ve already been through a lot and will go through more,” says the mother of four, the youngest being a two-year-old boy who runs wild among the Georgian pier tables, Louis XV and XVI chairs, and clusters of blue-and-white porcelain. Multiple patterns conceal wear and tear, and, the client observes, “old carpets are pretty much indestructible.” (When she told Redd that she wanted only well-worn Persians, the designer, delighted, responded, “More power to you.”) As for the richness of decorative effect, “it really combines high and low, but you would never know that,” she explains. “A lot of the furnishings are not significant, but they look significant. Miles is great at that, repurposing things and making them look amazing.”
Antiques are such a good value today, and they’re great for a family lifestyle; they’ve already been through a lot and will go through more
Re-dressing, repainting, redeploying, reinventing: Refreshening is the Redd way. In the living room—where the walls are slicked with aquamarine satin—indifferent taborets get chic with a jaguar-print velour that also shows up on a handful of cushions.(Big-cat prints were a leitmotif of Elsie de Wolfe, the fabled 20th-century decorating dynamo who ranks tip-top on Redd’s list of worthies.) A nearby antique German fauteuil, which should by all rights be clad in a stuffy stretch of scratchy Aubusson, is splashed with a sleek fabric striped in green, blue, and white (bringing to mind the parallel lines associated with 1960s style goddess Pauline de Rothschild).
Georgian tables, snapped up at auction for the dining room, now have fresh snow-white complexions. (Hello, Dorothy Draper.) “Why wouldn’t you buy a pedestrian old sideboard, something grandmotherly, and tweak it?” Redd asks. “Paint it, ebonize it, lacquer it, or gild it.” Dining room and master bedroom bloom with classic chinoiserie scenic wallpapers, a decorating trope since the 18th century. In the breakfast room, a Billy Baldwin hallmark (raffia wall covering) meets a canonical Colefax and Fowler print (Bowood rose-pattern chintz) and a dollop of Syrie Maugham (the Venetian-style chairs are a lyrical touch that the British grande dame often used). There’s a John Fowler echo, too, in the entrance hall’s apricot walls, a succulent shade that the Englishman famously splashed all over Christ Church Library in the 1950s.
“Those are the designers I’ve always looked to emulate, and what I’ve learned from them comes out in its own unique way,” Redd says. He adds with a grin, “If you borrow from many, it’s research; if you borrow from just one, it’s plagiarism.”
One outright copy to which Redd readily admits is the painted ceiling in the entrance vestibule, a small, sunlit space that leads from the front door to the apricot hall. Seeing the ceiling’s billowing contours for the first time, Redd let his mind wander to the big trompe l’oeil–tented room at Casa degli Atellani, a flamboyantly stylish house seen in the movie I Am Love. Artist Agustin Hurtado reduced that Milanese inspiration to fit the San Francisco space. Redd complemented the whimsical tabs and tassels with some pleasingly fussy furnishings, including a palazzo-perfect rococo-style table and a grandiose 18th-century Swedish cartel clock. French Abstract Expressionist watercolors add a dash of hipness.
Tradition may be out of fashion at the moment, but given the allure of this family-friendly anachronism on the West Coast, perhaps it’s time to start stocking up on languishing antiques. “It’s a great, interesting, eclectic mix, the modern next to something very old,” the wife says. “And it’s still going to be amazing in 30 years. This will hold up.”
