A Fine Line

Once, when L.A. interior designer Kerry Joyce couldn’t find the perfect chair for a client’s house, he designed it himself. That chair five years ago soon led to a growing line of furniture (tables, benches, screens, chests) hand-finished by local craftsman James Jennings. Some pieces are original; some are inspired by traditional and contemporary styles adapted to suit Joyce’s preference for clean shapes and elegant proportions.

“Most of my chairs have personality, a spirit,” Joyce says. His new “Cee” chair, for example, with its fat cushions and curved back, is his take on a 1930s Jean Michel Frank original he saw in a Paris shop. “I kept the basic lines,” he says, “but changed the scale because people today are larger than they were then.” The butterfly-shaped arms of the “Papillon” chair came to him in a dream. “I wanted something formal but organic at the same time.” And his mahogany “League” chair resembles a prosaic school chair but is burnished with a French polish usually reserved for more stately pieces. “Beautiful woods help add a timeless quality,” Joyce says. “If you walk into a room of mine and can’t tell if it’s 1939 or 1998, I’ve succeeded.”

Joyce, who studied theatre design and has won an Emmy for set decoration, sees furniture as props for the understated rooms he creates. He favors subtle colors for walls, dark wood floors and natural fabrics such as linen, mohair and cotton. “I don’t design attention-getting rooms or furniture or anything that might look temporary,” says Joyce, who counts among his clients actors Jami Gertz and Paul Hogan and MTV Networks executive Tom Freston. “I push myself to use color, but white always adds instant style to a room.”

Currently, Joyce is remodeling a grand 1927 beach house at Southampton, N.Y., for hotelier Ian Schrager. He describes it as simple and spare with all the furniture slipcovered in washable white linen to soften the formality. “I’m making it look undecorated,” he says. “It’s almost theatrical because of its emptiness.”