Traveling Exhibit
Antiques dealer Pat McGann’s apartment is nothing if not a study in contrasts: Nineteenth-century Chinese desk. Modernist German lamps. Czechoslovakian tea set. French deck chairs. Japanese coffee table. And that’s just the living/dining room.
But what sounds like a recipe for design disaster--multiculturalism run amok--is actually the secret to her success. “I hate to use the E-word, eclectic, to describe my style because it’s so overused,” McGann says. “But it does reflect that I’m a traveler and like a lot of different things.”
Whatever you call it, she certainly preaches what she practices. McGann lives and works in a charming 1940s courtyard complex on La Cienega Boulevard, and the same global aesthetic that enlivens her home interiors informs her Courtyard Gallery showroom. Casual yet sophisticated, the look was honed after years spent exploring the world. “I never opened a book in college,” she says. “My travels were my education.”
Indeed, after McGann, a native New Yorker, dropped out of art school in the ‘60s to live in a commune, she set out to visit India for three months--and ended up in England for 12 years. In London, she learned to restore textiles and carpets. A stint selling rugs in New York followed, then she migrated to Los Angeles in 1989 and launched Courtyard Gallery in 1994.
Two years ago, while she briefly represented British rug designer Christopher Farr, McGann relocated her shop within the complex to a larger retail space visible from the street. By then, she had moved into residential quarters upstairs. “I used to live in Hollywood,” she says. “Now I have this beautiful place and a wonderful commute.”
Unfortunately, her one-bedroom apartment had been neglected after decades of commercial use. Making it habitable again took some doing. She hauled out box after box of debris, exposing original architectural details such as the parquet floor, brass hardware and French doors overlooking the lush, bougainvillea-veiled courtyard garden below.
The marble mantel was long gone (filched by a previous tenant), but McGann’s disappointment turned to delight after she pried away wallboard and discovered the fireplace’s dramatic floor-to-ceiling sheath of smoked glass. “If I hadn’t looked closely I might never have known it was there,” she says. Once the kitchen and tiny rooftop guesthouse were updated, all that was left to do was repaint and unpack.
The decor is relaxed and idiosyncratic, composed mostly of 20th century furniture peppered with ethnic accessories. There’s an Art Deco rug paired with a glass-topped Chinese rattan table in the dining area, for example, and gold-leaf lampshades juxtaposed against a window treatment of patterned African Kuba cloth in the bedroom.
“My style has evolved over the years,” says McGann, who continues to visit Europe and India for business and pleasure. “I was into early American growing up and Victoriana in Europe. Then I moved to California and, like everyone else, became a Modernist.”
Her art collection includes canvases by the late L.A. artist Arnold Schifrin, framed FBI shooting targets and the work McGann creates herself in classes at Barnsdall Art Park. A collage fashioned from a yard-sale shelf remains a work in progress above the breakfast nook, evolving as McGann adds and subtracts photos, found objects and oddball newspaper clippings. “I collect interesting obituaries,” she says. “And here’s a picture of Bill and Monica in a Chinese paper.”
Like the collage, McGann’s furnishings are always in flux, depending on what’s for sale at her shop. To keep the inventory fresh, she rotates pieces that have languished in the showroom in and out of her home. “I like that the house changes. Otherwise, I’d get bored,” she says. “It’s a movable feast.”
The flip side is never growing too possessive of any of these treasures, but not to worry. “I’m a bit of a gypsy, so I can’t be attached to things,” McGann says. “And as much as I appreciate finding great stuff, I’m happy for someone else to live with it as well.”
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Resource Guide
Pat McGann Courtyard Gallery, Los Angeles, (310) 657-8708; Christopher Farr, Los Angeles, (310) 967-0064.