SOCAL STYLE / Home & Garden : A Honolulu Lulu : Designer Jarrett Hedborg Creates an Island-Style House in the Valley That’s All Smiles
A diamond blue ’61 Thunderbird sits in the driveway. At the top of the steep stairway is a small tropical garden of queen palms and fragrant plumeria with a lanai that’s open to the breezes. Chords of Martin Denny’s “Quiet Village” float in the hot, dry air. Welcome to Jarrett Hedborg’s mid-century modern Hawaiian paradise. “I’m not into historical re-creations but into setting a mood,” says the interior designer about his hillside home in Sherman Oaks. The California native has been in love with all things Hawaiian for as long as he can remember. “I grew up in San Clemente in the ‘50s, when surfing was considered a cultural tradition and backyard luaus were a ritual,” Hedborg recalls. “Hawaii represented fantasy and escape: Elvis singing ‘Blue Hawaii’ . . . Michener . . . the Velzy surfboard guys and Charles Eames working within shouting distance of each other, both creating those wonderful slipstream-airplane shapes . . . . “
Hedborg’s vision of island style came to him in the late ‘80s, when he purchased his postwar contemporary home. “I brought in lots of pareu cloths, lauhala mats, roadside-stand shells and monkey pod bowls--and anything else I could fit in the overhead bin and drag back from Hawaii.” Ten years later, he adds, he knew it was time to rethink the look. “I didn’t want to lose the mood, but I wanted to make a more cohesive design statement.”
He painted the exterior Kahala Hilton-green. Then he left for a three-month vacation, turning the garden over to landscape designer Frank Perrino with the inspirational mandate: “Think Hawaiian resort circa 1959.” When he returned, there was green slate on the lanai and, outside the bedroom, a grove of queen palms and clivia set in polished black river stones reminiscent of Hawaii’s black sand beaches. “When I wake up and look out through the grove of palms, I smile and think: ‘Yes! Another day in paradise.’ ” To set a playful island mood inside, Hedborg hung a giant marlin over the fireplace. “I gave myself a challenge--designing a room around a leaping fish.” From there he mixed furnishings from his own Kahala Collection (named after a tony section of Honolulu where he often hangs out) with serious mid-century pieces by Hans Wegner, Grete Jalk and George Nakashima. “The collection is my interpretation of mid-century with a Hawaiian flavor,” says Hedborg, who soaked up inspiration for the handsome pieces while watching outriggers and long boards pass by on Kahala beach. The result, Outrigger and Long Board coffee tables, along with an oak dining table and chairs stained dark and named Mai Tai after his favorite island drink. “Design for me becomes shape, form, light, color,” says Hedborg, a former painter.
Other decorative touches carry the theme throughout the house: lauhala mats atop wall-to-wall sea grass; furnishings covered with printed floral geometrics (“you know, the Florence Knoll-goes-to-Honolulu look,” says Hedborg), and other tactile fabrics such as linen and silk. In addition, paintings of exploding volcanoes, seascapes and exotic blooms that he has collected over the years hang in every room, while his fleet of model airplanes sits atop cabinets, ready for takeoff. “I just love that shape,” he says of the tiny aircraft. Stenciled fish swim along the kitchen walls, while a glass mosaic marlin is inset into a bathroom wall. “I shower every morning with my leaping marlin,” says Hedborg. “I like things that make you smile; they don’t need to have any meaning beyond that.”
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Hedborg’s Hawaiian-style top 10:
* Martin Denny’s “Quiet Village.”
* At least one exploding volcano painting.
* A stuffed marlin.
* Monkey pod bowls and Trader Vic’s ashtrays.
* Lauhala mats.
* South Seas fabrics.
* “My Old Sweetheart,” by Susanna Moore.
* “From Here to Eternity.”
* Val Surf T-shirts.
* “Trader Vic’s Bartender’s Guide.”
