Modernist Makeover

Leave it to antiques dealer Adam Blackman to spot a diamond in the rough. At Blackman Cruz, the La Cienega shop he runs with business partner David Cruz, he specializes in the weird and wonderful furniture and accessories that other dealers often miss or “dis.” So when Blackman came across a funky Brentwood fixer-upper six years ago, his eccentric eye focused on its hidden potential.

“Everything was painted white--the wood ceilings, the concrete blocks. There was a space heater next to the fireplace. Louvered panels were nailed shut. And a really crummy guesthouse had been added in the ‘70s,” Blackman recalls. “But it was an A. Quincy Jones house. I went to the broker’s office that day and made an offer.”

Jones, an influential mid-century architect who helped pioneer the indoor-outdoor California home, built the modernist house on a ridge in 1950 as part of the Crestwood Hills housing development. It featured snug interiors oriented toward canyon views and was built with simple, affordable materials such as Douglas fir, redwood, concrete block and glass.

Blackman set out to renovate and, with the help of contractor and designer Rick Cortez, recaptured much of the original spirit of Jones’ elegantly understated gem. “I had all the wood hand-stripped. That took three months. Then we sandblasted the blocks,” he says. “I hate to sound trite, but it was like uncovering a treasure.”

Instead of opting for a slavishly faithful restoration, Blackman made several changes to adapt his home to today’s lifestyle. “The house was very dark. I wanted to open it up,” he says. “At the same time, I left the ‘bones’ intact and did only things that were appropriate.” For example, Blackman created a tranquil Asian-inflected courtyard between the carport and front door, installed a fish pond and rock garden, then repeated the interior’s louvered panels as a privacy screen.

Inside, Blackman enlarged the dining room and replaced the tiny kitchen with large display and storage cabinets that frame a low horizontal window to the courtyard. He added a 250-square-foot galley kitchen, where he recycled old door and drawer pulls and reserved one stainless-steel counter for his pet tarantula, Harry, who lives in a vintage terrarium.

Blackman turned a patio into the sitting room by extending the block walls and plank ceilings and wrapping the space in glass. Elsewhere, he removed part of a wall in the master bedroom to make the most of the view of the Getty Center. He remodeled the shoddy guesthouse as a guest room and home office. And he updated the bathrooms with contemporary fixtures and mosaic tile.

Next came the decor. Blackman consulted interior designer Jay Holman, who, among other things, helped select rugs for the concrete floors and earthy paint colors for the partition separating the dining and sitting rooms. But when it came to the furnishings, Blackman indulged his passion for the eclectic.

The accessories include a lopsided and undecorated 19th century Sevres ceramic urn, a hooked wall hanging that once graced a Playboy Club, a mechanical amusement park lion and gigantic binoculars salvaged from a ship. Closets and cubbies are packed with enough quirky finds--Victorian wood rattles, Japanese bronze turtles, stereographs, clocks, finials, mortars and pestles, whistles and even an opium pipe--to qualify Blackman as a contestant for “Let’s Make a Deal” 10 times over.

“Isn’t the fact that you haven’t seen it before--isn’t that fantastic?” Blackman says of the rare trinkets. “I never buy by name. I only care if it’s cool and unusual.” And yet he has managed to assemble a curator’s mix of seating by design legends Jean Prouve, Hans Wegner and Paul Frankl and other equally impressive pieces by Gio Ponti, T.H. Robsjohn-Gibbings and Billy Haines.

But Blackman’s most prized possessions, the things he says he’d grab in the event of a fire, are a pair of lifelike 19th century Chinese ancestral figures carved out of wood and set beside a 1930s Kem Weber pagoda-shaped lamp. “The detail is so amazing. That’s real hair,” Blackman says, pointing to the male figure’s mustache. Not as easy to carry but just as precious to him are a biomorphic Gazelle table in bronze and marble and matching chairs in bronze and cane that were designed by Californian Dan Johnson and made in Italy in the ‘50s. “I like bronze,” Blackman says of the rare ensemble. “It doesn’t get broken, and it has a warmth to the patina.”

And so it is that Blackman, merchant of the offbeat, surrounds himself with the cool and unusual in a home he rescued from, well, if not obscurity, then the indignities of neglect. “There was an honesty to Jones’ work that I wanted to respect,” Blackman says. “I hope I’ve improved on the house and, if Jones were around today, he would appreciate what I’ve done.”

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RESOURCE GUIDE

Blackman Cruz, Los Angeles, (310) 657-9228, www.blackmancruz.com. Rick Cortez, RAC Design Build, Los Angeles, (323) 663-9898, www.racdb.com. Jay Holman, Harrison Holman Interior Design, Los Angeles, (310) 271-6620.