DESIGN : Pottery and Pine

MUCH IS MADE these days of mixing traditions and textures, and the results can be discomforting: design for the sake of design. This is not the case at Girasole, on up-and-coming Colorado Boulevard in Old Pasadena. Owner Gary Wilbert has selected as his focus two design classics--Italian ceramics and English and Irish pine antiques--and the combination is at once contemporary and Old World.

There’s a simple elegance to the space itself--as clean-lined as the pine, as eye-catching as the pottery (note the blush-patina concrete with pine-inlay floor that Wilbert made himself). Tableware patterns range from the classic, Ricco Deruta, to the new, Narciso. The furniture at Girasole (Italian for sunflower ), --which includes armoires, coffee and dining tables and trunks--once was considered “poor man’s furniture.” Today, it has a definite rich look; Wilbert strips each piece to a warm honey color, then waxes it with a special English wax. Just the thing for a stately San Marino home or a new Pasadena condominium.

Girasole, 38 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena; (818) 449-2500.