Henri Matisse’s first design for Ascher, "Echarpe No. 1," was exhibited at the Lefevre Gallery in 1947. One of the two coral-based designs, it was intended to be produced in a limited edition of 275. Courtesy of the Fashion and Textile Museum.
On a scenic one-acre site in Inverness, California, Richardson Architects planted an artist studio in a hillside overlooking a coastal vista. The client, a painter who lives on the property, requested the addition be situated downhill from the main residence to provide a more secluded place to work.
"Number, Please?" a silk scarf designed by Salvador Dali for Wesley Simpson circa 1947. The design is derived from a sequence in Destino, Dali’s animation for Disney from 1946. Courtesy of the Fashion and Textile Museum.
"Ballerina," a screen-printed silk scarf designed by Dali for Wesley Simpson, circa 1947. Courtesy of the Fashion and Textile Museum.
A movable desk, sliding storage system for large canvases, and plenty of open space meet the artist's request for functionality. The sloped ceiling is made of Douglas fir.
"White Trellis," an artist’s square designed by Graham Sutherland for Ascher Ltd, 1946. Ascher exhibted a version of this scarf and a companion design at "Britain Can Make It," a 1946 London exhibition of industrial and product designs. Courtesy of the Fashion and Textile Museum.
An angled roof defers to the hill's incline. The windows are by Blomberg Window Systems.
"Family Group," an artist’s square designed by Henry Moore for Ascher, was exhibited both at "Britain Can Make It" in 1946 and the Lefevre Gallery in 1947, as well as being used for the cover of Grace Lovat Fraser’s book Textiles by Britain, 1948. The original sketches for the square date from around 1944. Courtesy of the Fashion and Textile Museum.
The bathroom tiles were a point of contention: Bartlett wanted Mexican tiles, while Berridge’s design favored a bare-bones, Donald Judd-like approach in keeping with the warehouse experience.
The compromise was that he used industrial sinks and designed the stainless-steel hardware to be as utilitarian as possible, and commissioned a set of plain tiles with a strict color palette of five yellows, five blues and five whites, derived from Bartlett’s work. She then arranged them on one wall as she would one of her installations. That way, both upstairs and downstairs bathrooms have Jennifer Bartlett originals on the wall.
The approximately 1,800-square-foot studio is clad in redwood to match the ochre terrain.
For consistency, the studio was inspired by the architecture of the main house.
Bartlett’s bedroom is in a ground-floor addition that was built onto the back of the building about 50 years ago. It is adjacent to her painting studio.
At the time of the opening of United Artists Theatre in New York, its owners proclaimed this building "the most beautiful, comfortable and up-to-date theatre in the world." As part of a United Artists Theatre series of buildings in Detroit, L.A., and New York, the idea was based a ‘movie palace’—a huge, all-encompassing destination where movies, recording studios, theater, and symphony performances, could all intermingle inside dazzling interiors.
The gutting of the ground floor uncovered a former union meeting hall, with a steel beam spanning 45 feet. “With renovations on buildings like these,” says Berridge, “you never know what you’ve got until you start doing demolition. Once we started, none of us could figure out what was holding the building up, because there were no posts. It was quite something. That’s what allowed us to have this huge open space on the ground floor.”
Bartlett didn’t want plugs that would protrude below where paintings hung, but the building code demands a certain amount per room, so the architect designed recessed ones that interrupted the plane of the wall as little as possible.
With 5,000 square feet on the ground floor, the structure boasts two capacious exhibition spaces, which the couple use to show their own work, as well as rent out to others for private events.
A glass door on the north side sits opposite a glass window on the south wall that overlooks a birch tree forest. Skylights pull light into the interior. "Even though the artist paints landscapes, she didn't want to be distracted by the beauty of her surroundings while in the studio, which led to the limited apertures," Peterson says.
Friends from Tonko's hometown of Bregenz, Austria, commissioned the studio when they acquired some land next to their home. They use it for drawing and sketching, as well as creating clay and gypsum sculptures that are later cast into bronze. Since the area is close to where he grew up, Tonko was incredibly familar with the view from the hillside.
Here Tim tinkers with works-in-progress in his studio space, situated across the courtyard from Nathalie’s.
What the original building lacked in period detailing, it made up for with massive interior spaces, natural light, and a hardy palette of wood and raw brick.
Working with these loft signatures, David developed the hall’s liveable side, adding under-floor heating, and a gigantic kitchen on the upper floor running the width of the building, with a 37-foot-long solid walnut counter on top of stainless steel cabinets. This unites the dining, cooking and social spaces that run the length of the front façade on the upper floor.
Architect Christian Tonko played with a double metaphor when designing the Camera Lucida studio. The name of the cantileverd hillside space, Latin for "bright chamber," references the open window facing the valley below, as well as the skylight that bathes the workspace in natural light.