Reinventing the Past, One Chair at a Time
Michael Berman was driving through mid-Wilshire when he came across a 1960s French Provincial sofa abandoned in an alley. To most people, it would have been a castoff destined for the dump. But to Berman--a design alchemist who transmutes old classics into new ones--it was loaded with potential.
So despite the big brass casters and mustard-yellow brocade that screamed utter cluelessness, Berman hauled the sofa back to his workroom. There he modified the arms, swapped the wheels for legs, reupholstered with parchment linen. And voila! He’d turned a dowdy relic into contemporary seating that whispered sophistication.
“Six years ago there was a niche to fill. I couldn’t find furniture that had both historical references and a modern look without being too trendy, so I designed it myself,” Berman explains. “Now I think of what I do as ready-to-wear, kind of like clothing. It mixes easily with antiques or can be used on its own.”
Since 1986 Berman has built a reputation as an interior designer who reenvisions the past and gives rooms a sleek, timeless spin. More recently he’s become known for an ever-expanding line of high-end custom furniture.
The collection, which debuted in 1996, numbers about 75 pieces, including earth-toned sofas and chairs, tables and beds, lamps and mirrors. Available through the Bradbury Collection showroom, his furniture has just earned Berman the Pacific Design Center’s 2002 Star of Design award for product design. This year’s other award winners include architect Michael Maltzan, interior designer Frank Pennino, artist Robert Graham, photographer Greg Gorman, developer Tom Gilmore and graphic designer Carlos Diniz, who died last year.
“Michael creates furniture that’s incredibly stylish and chic. There’s nothing tricky about it,” says Margaret Russell, editor in chief of Elle Decor. “With tricky furniture, you don’t know if it’s a chair or a piece of art. But his is a very tailored, cohesive collection.”
Trained by American designer Angelo Donghia, Berman embraces the classically influenced modern aesthetic that Donghia brought to fine furniture in the ‘60s. With an emphasis on style, comfort and craftmanship, Berman reinterprets familiar shapes and makes them fresh again.
Take the Klismos Armchair, which retails for $1,600. He resized the saber legs of the klismos (an ancient Greek form) for a stouter silhouette, cushioned the seat and splat, then added arms carved with a subtle Greek key detail. For Jack’s Club Chair ($2,600), named in honor of his father, Berman took the large, boxy character of the traditional club chair and incorporated a serpentine back for a lighter rear profile and, while he was at it, padded the arms and back, not merely the seat, with down for a pillowy softness.
“Michael has a good eye, a great sense of line and proportion,” says Kerry Joyce, another L.A. interior designer who produces his own furniture. “His designs are reminiscent of a bygone era, but he adds a modern sensibility so they’re not just period pieces.”
Born in Detroit, the 41-year-old Berman was in tune with his inner designer early on. When he was 5, his parents were already asking his opinion on everything from furnishings to wall and floor coverings for the family’s new house. By the time he was 10, Berman was collecting bentwood furniture rather than baseball cards and rearranging the living room instead of playing football.
He has always been fascinated by Art Deco and American Moderne design from the ‘20s and ‘30s. “I was a fan of the age of transatlantic travel--the cars, the trains, aviation,” he says. “The furniture was clean, curvilinear and had a wonderful sense of movement.”
At 19, Berman enrolled in art classes at the Center for Creative Studies in Detroit but dropped out to pursue acting. A singer and dancer in high school, he immediately landed a job in the chorus line at Radio City Music Hall. Berman was thrilled to perform in New York, but about a year later realized his true passion was more for Radio City’s famous architecture than its footlights. “I used to wander through the building and photograph all the Art Deco details,” he says.
In 1981, 21 and eager to embark on a new career, Berman landed a job in the Donghia sample room in L.A. “It was akin to being the busboy,” he says of organizing fabric swatches and product information sheets. But he proved to be a quick study and was eventually promoted to the furniture operation. “It felt like I was called to the White House.”
Berman assisted Donghia whenever the acclaimed designer visited from New York. As chauffeur and right-hand man, Berman hung on Donghia’s every word. “I got an incredible education in the tailoring of fine furniture,” he recalls. “I learned all about color, scale, proportion and construction from one of the best. I also learned diplomacy and how to interact with employees and clients. His example is something I put down on paper and still review today as I try to apply the same principles to my business.”
In 1986, a year after Donghia died at age 50, Berman struck out on his own, establishing his Melrose-area firm, Michael Berman Limited. He developed a signature style of restrained glamour that not surprisingly owes a debt to Donghia as well as to Deco visionaries Paul Frankl and Jacques-Emile Ruhlmann.
Over the years, his work has graced contemporary houses and a handful of historically significant homes by Richard Neutra, Paul Williams, Raphael Soriano and Roland Coate. “If I had my druthers, I’d always work on architecturally noteworthy projects,” Berman says, “but it really doesn’t matter whether they’re vintage or modern as long as I like the clients.” The names on his client list include several Hollywood celebrities, plus artist Lari Pittman, writer/food critic Merrill Shindler and ABC Television president Steven Bornstein.
Today Berman draws inspiration from a select group of his peers. In addition to the furniture of fellow Angeleno Joyce (“It’s very delicately executed and always classic”), he admires the designs of France’s Christian Liagre (“I love his primitive but modern approach”) and Andree Putman (“She can make cold, sharp, hard materials look incredibly soft and sensuous”).
Vintage photos by Irving Penn and treasures found at the Long Beach Swap Meet provide other points of creative departure. Berman stashes them in the Hollywood Hills home he shares with partner Lee Weinstein, a clinical social worker/psychotherapist, and their pet basenji, Fritz. “My house is either a phenomenal showcase for my furniture,” he says, “or else an incredible dumping ground for found objects.”
Like his mentor Donghia, Berman personally attends to quality control and continues to seek innovation, setting aside as much as nine months to make and test one prototype. “I don’t like the current homogenization of shapes and finishes,” he says. Which explains his plans to introduce the new elliptical Mansfield dining table in a satin-sheen ecru lacquer (priced at $7,600) and offer other pieces in new sand and cinnabar ceruse-on-oak finishes. “They’re dramatic, but I think people are looking for something they haven’t seen before.”
These days Berman spends less time on interior design as the demands of his collection grow. “I couldn’t say which I enjoy more, but there’s something about seeing how total strangers gravitate to my furniture,” he says. “It’s the ultimate high to get a call from a housewife in Des Moines, Iowa, who’s clipped a picture from a magazine.”
Meanwhile he has begun to branch out, creating ceramic tiles for Santa Barbara-based Astor Tileworks, area rugs for Aga John and plumbing fixtures for Rohl. In December he launched a catalog of hotel furniture. By the end of this year he hopes to recolor the palette for a major paint manufacturer. And after that he wouldn’t mind coming up with a line of tableware, breaking into restaurant interiors or perhaps opening his own retail showroom.
“I won’t stop designing,” Berman insists, “till someone puts me in my grave.”
