A house inspired
TWENTY-ONE high-profile designers. Six months of renovation. About $13 million in labor, landscaping and furnishings. Add them up and House Beautiful magazine’s third annual Celebrity Showhouse could be a dream home or a clash of the decor titans. “This is not a collection of disparate, experimental rooms,” says magazine editor in chief Mark Mayfield, who hosts a fundraising dinner for Children’s Action Network on Friday at the Brentwood show house. “It’s a home that looks as if a family actually lives there.” Well, a made-in-Hollywood family. Designer Waldo Fernandez cited past client Tobey Maguire’s preference for “calm rooms, good taste and good art” as inspiration for the foyer’s spare, yet elegant assemblage of Ming Dynasty and Mediterranean antiques and modern art. Actress Dakota Fanning was more hands-on than Maguire, helping landscape designer Stephen Block to create a “secret garden” with cast concrete pavers that look like candy-colored throw pillows. House Beautiful’s Celebrity Showhouse, open 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily, Saturday through Oct. 16 at 12805 N. Bristol Circle, Los Angeles. Admission, $25. Fundraising dinner Friday featuring sale of select show house furnishings to benefit charity, $225. (800) 525-6789.
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HAPPENING: Sold on L.A.’s decorative past
What took it so long? In its first L.A. auction of 20th century furniture and decorative arts, Bonhams & Butterfields has assembled a timely survey that runs from Tiffany glass to a Gehry cardboard chair. Among the California twists: custom wood furniture by Sam Maloof (lots 3219 to 3222) and shell-studded tables by the late decorator Tony Duquette (lots 3181 and 3182). San Francisco designer John Dickinson’s wonderful anthropomorphic plaster pieces from the late ‘70s (lots 3200 to 3214) include the African table shown here, valued between $10,000 and $15,000. Public previews, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday through Monday; auction 6 p.m. Monday. 7601 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles; (323) 850-7500; www.butterfields.com.
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HOME PAGES: Take the vacation, then sleep on it
Here’s some cost analysis for you: One night at Shutters on the Beach in Santa Monica will set you back $450 to $715, depending on the view (or lack of it). Or you could spend that mad money on creating this room replica at home. Guests of the hotel recently began getting a little night-table extra, the Shutters Beach Style catalog, also available to non-guests online at www.shuttersbeachstyle.com. It offers bed and bath accessories as well as the signature teak Steamer chaise ($770). Prominently featured in the catalog and website are the hotel’s Coastal pillowcases, $50, and shams, $115, and decorative shell-fringed, striped throw pillow, $350, all shown here on an “ultra plush” mattress with silken-wool pillow top with memory foam layer, from $1,295. Not available from the catalog: the $11.31 tea and toast from room service.
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SEEN: His work breaks the molding
John Elder gives crown moldings the royal treatment. The Los Angeles photographer recently launched “Between 4th and 5th,” a show of architectural salvage fabrications on the exterior of the custom clothier Matrushka Construction in Silver Lake. Elder says he became a sculptor by taking pictures of discarded wood trim. “Once I had a garage full of it,” he says, “I started tinkering.” The result: spare, white-painted sculpture made from dozens of intricately curved and carved moldings that he mounted on a skeleton of medium density fiberboard. Viewed from the side, Elder’s cross-sections are witty art pieces, but these modernist deconstructions of classical architecture also can serve as structural corbels, wall-mounted pedestals for artwork or shelving brackets starting at $300. The pieces can be viewed at Matrushka, 4281 Fountain Ave.; (323) 665-4513. For custom orders, call Elder at (818) 825-3299 or e-mail bluestarphoto@yahoo.com.