Interior Motives

After looking at hundreds of color swatches and dozens of interior motifs throughout the day, model-home designer Dana Eggerts returns to Balboa Island and enters her monochromatic house that is as serene as a Japanese garden.

And that’s just what she wants.

“Since I work with color constantly, I wanted a home environment that was almost colorless,” says Eggerts, president of Creative Design Consultants Inc. in Costa Mesa. “And after a day full of phones, bells and whistles, I wanted my home quiet.”

The overriding theme of her three-bedroom home is light, air and earth. The decor is organic--there is ledger stone on the fireplace, oak floors throughout and dark granite on the kitchen counter tops. Textures are soft, and furnishings are predominately round.

The walls are painted a camel color that fades into the background, keeping the art and furniture on display. With a similar color on the wood floors, the ground floor--which encompasses the entry, living room, dining room and kitchen of the two-story house--is pulled together.

This look, dubbed Japanese Country, is beginning to surface as one of the trends of the late ‘90s. “Asian and African are the two big design motifs I see coming on strong right now,” says Cecile Bradbury, owner of the Bradbury Collection in the Pacific Design Center.

There is a book, “East Meets West: Global Design for Contemporary Interiors” by Kelly Hoppen (Rizzoli, 1997, $50), that gives practical advice on how to achieve the look.

In designing her 2,400-square-foot house, Eggerts collaborated with Laurie Ghielmetti, an art consultant and owner of Laurie Ghielmetti Interiors in San Francisco.

“I talked to Laurie about doing a house with a rustic approach that used touches of Asian design. She helped me find a kettle table, which serves as a cocktail table and sets the tone of the ground floor,” Eggerts says.

The table is made of limed wood and is glazed in a dark raisin color.

In the sisal-carpeted living room, Eggerts combines traditional furniture with Asian accents. The sofa’s brocade fabric was changed to a woven, ulti-textured chenille. A contemporary African art work is in the form of a kimono.

A 17th century Japanese altar is used as a room divider between the living and dining areas. The table holds 17th century pharmacy scales, sake bottles and a Japanese box.

She found many of the Japanese antiques at Sloan Miyasato in San Francisco.

Many ceramics, ivory carvings, cloisonne enamels and lacquer ware are considered “mingei,” or people’s art. They were created for everyday use by Japanese artisans and are done in traditional styles using age-old techniques. These came out of the revival in interest in Japanese folk art that began in Japan around 1926.

An example is the whimsical wood-carved elephant that sits in the entry niche. The proportions aren’t perfect, but the primitive style echoes contemporary art movements such as Cubism. “They had never seen an elephant in Japan, so they made this based on what they’d read,” Eggerts says.

Continuing in the Japanese folk art tradition, the base of the glass dining table is made of two large wooden rice cogs. A large antique wooden bowl sits on top.

Leaning against the wall is an old warehouse door that bears chalk writing on it from the days when it was functional, not decorative.

By combining the simplest designs from many time periods, Eggerts has created a unity of color and atmosphere. And it creates the serene feeling she desires.