The romantic bohemian often trades in contrasts, between the natural and the supernatural, the familiar and the exotic, the narrative and the poetic. Objects are relics. The home is a theatrical space, full of dramatic moments, music, and circuslike quirks. The arts flirt with the sciences. Old pianos, binoculars, and beakers play the role of both sculpture and instrument. These homes are glamorous and faded, considered and whimsical, worldly and otherworldly.
The living room is mutable and informal. A Danish-Modern sofa is surrounded by several small Moroccan tables that can be moved around the room depending on the circumstances of the day. The result is a living room that suits everyone’s needs.
BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA
Nestled among the tall pines in the Berkeley Hills, Erica Tanov’s 1926 Mediterranean-style home exemplifies the romantic bohemian’s contradictions. It is lovingly cared for, but acknowledges the beauty of decay. It feels both foreign and familiar, like home but also like an adventure. De Gournay wallpapers blend seamlessly with her children’s artwork. There is drama and romance, but also a quiet playfulness. Not just a home for her and for family, it’s also a theater, design studio, and concert hall. “Perhaps I am channeling Picasso’s French Villa La Californie. I love the haphazard, artistic, chaotic, crumbling grandeur.”
ERICA TANOV
Interior design consultant and designer of clothing and homewares for her boutique, Erica Tanov
STAR SIGN
Sagittarius
SPIRIT ANIMAL
Deer
STEVEN EMERSON
Musician, composer
ISABELLE
Age 17
HUGO
Age 12
ON BOHEMIANISM
“Free thinking, free spirited, untethered, stylistically hippie with a touch of glamour.”
The hallway is rich with pattern and art: The wallpaper is from Osborne and Little and the portrait is by her daughter Isabelle.
A Moroccan Beni Ourain rug adds texture to a large, airy living room. A shawl is draped neatly over the mid-century chair for a playful pink accent. The round burl-wood stool doubles as a table.
Quirky collections of family photos, children’s artwork, and mementos from their travels fill the built-in bookshelves.
On special occasions, the bottom floor of this three-story house is converted from Erica’s husband Steven’s studio into a performance space.
Music permeates the home. Steven is a musician and composer, and this piano was inherited from his great-aunt and great-uncle. On the wall hangs a portrait of a girl by Elodia Muzzi (Erica’s late cousin) and two collage paintings by Alexander Kori Girard.
Built-in shelves from previous owners were torn out, and their splotchy legacy on the wall harmonizes with the vintage pieces in the surrounding decor. The mid-century Chinoiserie cabinet doubles as a bar.
In the sitting room, a kantha quilt and an eclectic array of throw pillows cover a single bed. A Moroccan lantern with red glass casts a pretty design on the ceiling and lends a warm, pinkish glow to the entire room.
Prints, paintings, and photographs form a kind of gallery above a mid-century sofa adorned in bright pillows with pom-pom trims. “Textiles are my weakness,” says Erica.
Erica’s studio used to be an outdoor patio. She added windows and a roof, creating an indoor-outdoor space that is quite distinct from the rest of the house. The walls are full of windows and mirrors, making this sunny spot perfect for conjuring up new design schemes.
The bedroom is the ultimate space in this home. Striking hand-painted De Gournay wallpaper that is now aging in the most wonderful way was Erica’s most extravagant purchase for the home. A transparent table lamp provides height and light without blocking too much of the gorgeous wallpaper.
The Chinese floral motif reappears on a bedside lamp, offering a variation on the wallpaper theme without competing with it.
A sophisticated Chinese-style black dresser is set against what used to be an exterior wall that is now adorned with inspiring doodles and a collection of pages torn out of magazines.
1
PAINT IT BLACK
Erica’s dressers are all glossy and black. If you have an old dresser that needs a little love, paint it black. Add brass hardware for shine and let it patina.
2
TWICE AS NICE, HALF THE PRICE
When you have a statement lamp as great as this one, it’s nice to see double. Use mirrors to reflect your favorite lamps to get twice the light and twice the lamp.
3
UNITED COLORS OF GLASSWARE
Choose themes that unite collections. Gold accents are what give this eclectic group of glasses a cohesive, collected look.
4
BRANCH OUT
A large branch makes a great towel rack in the bathroom.
The foyer is the most dramatic space in the home and functions as a spiritual palate cleanser—forget the humdrum banality of the world outside and welcome to a world of mystery and magic. Like a fortune-teller’s tent, the light here is dark and red. It feels more like a movie set than a home, except for the shoes, mail, and umbrellas.
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
The Silver Lake home of Jared Frank has all of the beauty, darkness, and surreality of a circus. Murals come to life in playful acts of trompe l’oeil. Masks—some jolly and others terrifying—peer out from shadows cast by theatrical lighting. Spirits animate the space, evoking the glories and tragedies of past lives. Relationships with these spirits play a starring role in this home. The most prominent spirit is that of a former tenant, the late Lance Klemm, whose fresco murals linger on the walls, floors, and ceilings. “I was primarily inspired by Klemm’s frescos,” says Jared. “My decoration throughout is a response to his ornament. His playful attitude, dramatic theatricality, and sense of history inform all my choices.”
JARED FRANK
Interior designer, set designer, and founder of Topsy Design
STAR SIGN
Cancer
SPIRIT ANIMAL
Topsy the elephant. “She was electrocuted by Thomas Edison in 1903 at Coney Island in an attempt to discredit Westinghouse’s alternating current. The short film, which was shown across the United States, was the first widely seen recording of a creature’s death. I’ve named my company Topsy Design in memory of her.”
ON BOHEMIANISM
“Narrative mystery is what I love most about living here. Many artists leave their work on the easel, in the studio. But a bohemian lives his or her art daily. They bring their creative spirit home.”
A large “Topsy” sign illuminates a collection of papier-mâché masks. The bearded mask represents Goliath and was used in a ceremony held by the Independent Order of Odd Fellows reenacting the biblical story of David and Goliath. “One of the things I like best about ceremonial artifacts from secret orders is that one can never know the full story of the objects,” says Jared. “As these lodges go the way of history, their secrets go with them. The objects left behind can be appreciated for their intrinsic aesthetic qualities as well as their obscured narratives of use.”
In the living room, the atmosphere becomes less theatrical and more period: “While decorating this house, I was particularly drawn to the period after industrialization but before World War II,” says Jared. “But in my work as a whole, I’m an equal-opportunity history buff.”
A mid-century Falcon chair sits under a turn-of-the-century gramophone horn, repurposed as a pendant lamp. A stack of vintage suitcases is used as a coffee table. A collection of old English street signs rests on a floor exquisitely painted by the former tenant, Lance Klemm. “I never met Lance before he passed, but he speaks to me daily through his art. In one place, above an archway in my living room, I kept a note he wrote: Carpe Diem.”
“When I design for clients, everything is methodically planned out in collaboration,” says Jared. “The biggest difference about decorating for myself is that rooms reveal themselves only over a period of time. This allows for both serendipity and continuous revision, a luxury that makes up for my much tighter budget.”
The particular way objects and furniture are arranged suggests symbolic relationships between them and shape the way people relate to them and to each other. In Jared’s home, especially the dining room, the placement of objects is deliberate, precisely in order to create particular narratives. “In my home,” he says, “the way objects are displayed and the relationships among them are just as important as the objects themselves.”
Strings of beads adorn the entryway to the kitchen, where the linoleum Jared installed adds a playful 1950s vibe. A built-in bench sits behind a vintage industrial-style collapsible table. The miniature kilim and embroidered pillows on the bench were purchased on eBay.
Moss-green built-in shelves with quirky details give the kitchen a vaguely Tuscan feel. They were built by Lance but look as though they might have been found at a salvage yard. The narrow shelves take up very little space but go all the way up to the ceiling, making them a perfect small-kitchen storage solution.
1
PAPER UMBRELLAMPS
In the entryway, Jared rigged paper umbrellas to lamp cages from a hardware store. The result is visually eye-catching and enhances the mood lighting.
2
YOU GOT THE LOOK
The former owner glued white-painted shells onto the fireplace mantel, which Jared decided to keep.
3
NAILED IT
Who says curtains need to hang on curtain rods? I love Jared’s solution of hanging curtains onto nails and twisting them back in a romantic gesture.
4
NICE BULBS
The filament light bulbs in the chandelier may be pricier than regular bulbs, but they add to the romance and charm of the space.
Arielle’s taste is sophisticated for someone so young. The Victorian aquarium purchased at Blackman Cruz was one of her own discoveries, and it was also her idea to fill it with potted cacti. The fantastic result is a major statement piece. Several elements of the living room, like the gothic candlesticks on the coffin or the throne at the wooden slab table, give it a dark and fantastical—almost medieval—feeling. It’s not always clear which artifacts are holdovers from her father’s reign and which Arielle brought in herself.
VENICE BEACH, CALIFORNIA
Arielle Pytka has called this loftlike space on Venice Beach home since high school, when she lived here with her father. He eventually moved out, but Arielle stayed to make this place a canvas for her sophisticated and eclectic tastes (her sister lives downstairs, see this page). Here, dark meets dreamy and the elaborate meets the scattered. It’s home, but it’s also a playground for creative pursuits: Upstairs is a darkroom and downstairs is a music room where jam sessions go late into the night. “How can I describe my home? It’s a perfect mess!”
ARIELLE PYTKA
Artist
STAR SIGN
Pisces
SPIRIT ANIMAL
Arabian horse
ON BOHEMIANISM
“Paris in the 1920s.”
The shucking leather club chair (its twin lives in sister Sacha’s apartment downstairs) is in front of a gallery wall full of black-and-white photos, many of which Arielle developed in her own darkroom upstairs.
An impressive collection of vintage books fills the shelves, adding a sense of color and history.
An enormous floral patterned rug Arielle inherited from her parents covers the unfinished wooden stairs that lead up to the bedroom. Squished into the narrow stairway, it feels simultaneously bizarre and brilliant. “I randomly put it there one day and just left it there,” says Arielle. “I can’t believe no one has ever fallen on it!”
Aside from the pristine white bed, everything about the bedroom feels weathered and ancient. A large vintage lace tablecloth found at the Rose Bowl flea market in Pasadena is draped casually over the window. Two art nouveau–style floor lamps look like they were found in Paris.
Punched-tin frames hold childhood photos of Arielle and her sister Sacha.
Several dream catchers hang above Arielle’s bed. Her mother made her favorite one using hair from the tail of her favorite childhood horse, Silver, a purebred Arabian.
ADOPT AN IDEA
1
RUGGED GOOD LOOKS
While I may have cut to fit the rug on the stairs of my home, and nailed/glued it in place, I love the idea of covering a stairway with a beautiful vintage rug.
2
A STENCILED WELCOME
Arielle used a stencil to paint a “mat” on the floor outside the bedroom. I think this trompe l’oeil detail is a fun idea. Put one inside the entryway of a home.
3
AGE OF AQUARIUM
My favorite element of Arielle’s home is the Victorian aquarium turned terrarium. With some salvaged hardware, an old aquarium, and a hot glue gun, a similar “wow” look can be achieved in any home.
WITH NATALIE GLUCK MITCHELL
I love stained glass not only for the colors it brings into a room but also for the romantic colored light that it produces. This faux stained glass window can simply be decorative, or it can be functional if placed in a window. Alternatively, the same technique could be applied directly to a window. Use it in a small room to lend a warm glow to the space.
MATERIALS
Old window. I found this one discarded on the curb, but you can find them at salvage yards and flea markets.
Lighting gel sheets in various colors. I used lighting gels (from Guitar Center) and spray adhesive, but transparent vinyl sheeting with adhesive is available on eBay from Paper Street Plastics. You will still outline and cut the shapes the same way, but they will be applied like stickers—no glue needed.
Repositionable spray adhesive
Screw hooks or S hooks
SUPPLIES
Measuring tape
Pencil
Poster board—at least the same size as the window
Cutting mat
Ruler or stencils
Craft knife
Thin, strong rope (at least a couple of yards)
Hammer and nails
INSTRUCTIONS
1. Measure the glass area you’re going to cover on your window. Draw a rectangle exactly that size on the poster board so that you can lay out your design before adhering it to the window.
2. Lay the gel sheets on the mat and, using a ruler or stencil, cut the desired shapes for the design. I used rectangles and squares to fill the entire space.
3. As you go, lay the shapes on the poster board (position this near the window for easy transfer). If you’re trying to re-create this specific design, it is helpful to loosely keep track of measurements so that you can complete the whole puzzle.
4. Once you’re happy with your design, following the directions on the spray adhesive, cover the top half of the window and work quickly to adhere one piece of gel at a time. Then complete the lower half.
5. Place the stained glass window in the desired location. You can arrange it like art on a console to complete a vignette or hang it in front of a window. If you do wish to hang your window, attach the screw hooks or S-hooks to the top of the wooden window frame a couple of inches from the outer edges. Cut two pieces of rope the right length for where you want to hang the window (don’t forget to add a few inches of rope on both ends so that you have enough space to tie knots). Thread the rope through one hook and tie securely. Repeat on the other side. Tie sturdy loops on the other ends of the rope. Measure the distance between the two hooks. Use that measurement to place nails or screws in the wall, depending on the type of wall you have. Place rope loops on the nails or screws to hang the window in place.
6. Enjoy the new colorful view!
Pyrite is said to be a protective stone that shields against negative energies—perfect for the home of the romantic bohemian, yes? These planters bring on the healing energy and the glam. Replicate the idea for vases, candleholders, and frames, too.
MATERIALS
2 pounds (1 kg) marble-size pyrite pieces. I got mine on eBay using the search term “pyrite lot”; on most sites, I found it cost around $10 a pound ($4.50/kg). I used less than 2 pounds (1 kg) for this project.
2 small terra-cotta planters—available at your local garden center and most craft stores
Loctite Go2 Glue
Potting soil for succulents
A collection of succulents
SUPPLIES
Towel
Hammer
Protective goggles
INSTRUCTIONS
1. If any pyrite pieces are too large, you can wrap them in a towel, place on a cement surface, and gently hammer into smaller pieces. Aim for marble-size pieces—you don’t want any of the pieces to be too heavy. Be sure to wear protective goggles when you do this.
2. With the terra-cotta pots sitting upright, start gluing the pyrite pieces to the bottom edge of the planters, all the way around. Use generous amounts of glue. Let the glue set for about half an hour, and then continue with the second row. Think of this as a puzzle, fitting the pieces together, filling any negative space. Rotate the pieces so that the flattest edge of the pyrite is up against the planter, and place the pyrite pieces as close together as possible.
3. Continue to glue the pyrite pieces onto the planter until you reach the top. Let the glue set for 48 hours.
4. Fill the planters with potting soil and a plant with shallow roots, like a succulent. Enjoy all the positive vibes you just ushered into your home!
