#FieldTripFriday — Today we’re in Beverly Glen, California, at the Walstrom House, designed by architect John Lautner in 1969.
Electrical engineer Douglas Walstrom and his wife Octavia were acquainted with Lautner’s work through their aerospace industry colleague Leonard Malin, owner of the Chemosphere. Lautner developed three design schemes for their half-acre hillside lot: a large tube with platforms floating within, a pair of cylinders, and a tower. The Walstroms chose the tower.
The 1,400-square-foot wooden treehouse feels like a return to Lautner’s houses of the 1940s, defined by the warmth of wood and deceptively simple geometries. From the street, the house appears to float above the wooden carport canopy, anchored to the hillside only by two massive glulam beams extending from the steep-sloped roof down into concrete foundations. The roofs of the main house and carport were painted forest green to integrate house and hill.
The entryway sits between two floors. Walking left down a few steps leads to the master and guest bedrooms. Walking up a ramp leads to the main living space with an 18-foot ceiling at its peak. Exposed wooden beams on the ceiling fan out slightly, creating movement and enlarging the space from inside. A banister-free staircase leads to a small mezzanine encased in plywood above the bookcase. Douglas Walstrom did some of the carpentry himself and designed a system to open six windows at once with the pull of a lever. Abundant glass dissolves the boundary between inside and outside.
The house was built by Wally Niewadomski, who collaborated with Lautner on Silvertop, the Elrod House, and the Bob Hope House. The Walstrom House was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2016 and remains a private residence.
Sources: @etandoesla , @latimes
Photos: Julius Shulman / @modarchitecture / @etandoesla / Jon Buono
“I love beeswax candles so much I keep a stockpile of them in my pantry and start to fret when the reserves dip below a half-dozen pairs. I light them every day at dinnertime, to officially mark a change in our day from work to rest and togetherness. I still believe that beeswax candles are the best hostess gift around.” — @fannysinger
Pair a set of our beeswax candles with ceramic candleholders as the perfect gift or to complete your own table.
#MakerMonday — French painter Suzanne Valadon (1865-1938) was one of the most successful female artists of her generation, known for bold color and frank depictions of the female nude painted from a woman’s perspective. Born Marie-Clémentine Valadon on September 23, 1865 in Bessines-sur-Gartempe to an unmarried laundress, she moved to Montmartre, Paris with her mother at age five. She left school at eleven, working as waitress, vegetable seller, weaver of funeral wreaths, and circus acrobat—a career cut short by falling from a trapeze.
From 1880 to 1893, Valadon modeled for important painters including Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Pierre Puvis de Chavannes. Toulouse-Lautrec nicknamed her “Suzanne” referencing the biblical Susanna and the Elders. Although she could not afford formal art classes, she learned from the painters around her. She had taught herself to draw from age nine. Edgar Degas discovered her drawings, taught her etching techniques, and encouraged her to exhibit.
In 1894, Valadon became the first woman painter admitted to the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. In 1896 she married stockbroker Paul Mousis. In 1909, age 44, she divorced and began painting full-time. Her first solo exhibition took place in 1911. She reached the height of her fame in the 1920s.
Valadon painted female nudes throughout her career—frank, unidealized depictions rarely found in work by male contemporaries. Her famous “La Chambre bleue” (The Blue Room, 1923) shows a clothed woman reclining with a cigarette, subverting traditional odalisque paintings. She also painted male nudes, self-portraits, still lifes, and landscapes.
She had a son in 1884, Maurice Utrillo, who became a renowned painter. She died April 7, 1938 in Paris. Work held by MoMA, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Centre Pompidou, and Art Institute of Chicago.
Sources: National Museum of Women in the Arts, Art Basel
#FieldTripFriday — Today we’re in Púbol, Spain, at Casa Gala, Salvador Dalí’s gift to his wife and muse.
Gala Dalí was born Elena Ivanovna Diakonova in Russia in 1894. She met poet Paul Éluard while recovering from tuberculosis in Switzerland and married him in 1917. Their unconventional marriage included a ménage à trois with artist Max Ernst for eighteen months. Gala became a central figure in the Surrealist movement, modeling for Man Ray and befriending René Crevel and René Char. In 1929, she met Salvador Dalí when the Éluards visited him in Spain. She left her husband and daughter to join Dalí in his fisherman’s house outside Cadaqués. They married in 1934.
Over five decades, Dalí created hundreds of drawings and paintings of Gala, portraying her as the Madonna, an erotic figure, or a mysterious woman. He even signed some paintings “Gala Salvador Dalí.” In 1969, Dalí purchased an 11th-century castle in Púbol as a sanctuary for Gala. He restored it with Gothic and Renaissance elements and surrealist touches. Radiators were hidden behind rattan shields or trompe-l’œil painted doors. Lamps were built into walls, coffee tables into floors. Dalí could only visit with a handwritten invitation from Gala, a practice they both enjoyed.
Gala died in 1982 after 53 years with Dalí. She is buried in a crypt at Casa Gala designed by Dalí to resemble a chessboard, laid to rest in her favorite red Dior dress. Dalí moved into the castle to be closer to her memory. In 1984, a fire broke out in his bedroom, severely burning him. He never returned to Púbol, moving instead to his Theatre-Museum in Figueres, where he died in 1989. The castle opened as a museum in 1996.
Sources: @tat.london , @parisreview
Four Edmund Davies platters remain from the first edition of Platter Project.
A mid-sized stoneware platter, wheel-thrown in an iron-rich blend of clays, with a soft semi-transparent eggshell texture that lets the native qualities of the clay ghost through. The pattern is painted freehand in iron and cobalt oxide, an inky hue that calls to mind Japanese sumi ink calligraphy.
Pictured here at @beatricefaverjon ’s home in Topanga — a beautiful and inspiring space — but this is a platter that belongs anywhere. It’s the kind of thing you set out once and never put away: equally at home serving, displaying fruit, or just living on the counter. Perfect through every season, and it will fit seamlessly into what you already have.
#MakerMonday — Italian-born Brazilian modernist architect Lina Bo Bardi (1914-1992) created just 20 realized projects—all in Brazil—that merged modernism with vernacular tradition. Born Achillina Bo in December 1914 in Rome, she graduated from Rome College of Architecture in 1939. She moved to Milan, working with architect Carlo Pagani and Gio Ponti, and became deputy director of Domus magazine 1944-1945.
With her office destroyed in World War II, she married art critic Pietro Maria Bardi in 1946 and moved to Brazil that same year. In 1950 she started magazine Habitat. In 1951 she designed her home, the Glass House (Casa de Vidro) in Morumbi, São Paulo, built on pilotis appearing to float above the landscape. She lived there 40 years; it now houses the Istituto Bardi.
Her most iconic project, MASP (Museu de Arte de São Paulo), built 1957-1968, suspended a glass volume above the street by four crimson pillars—the largest free-standing span in the world at construction. Inside, transparent “crystal easels” displayed artworks without walls.
In Salvador da Bahia she transformed the Solar do Unhão, a 17th-century sugar mill, 1959-63. Her SESC Pompéia 1977-1986 transformed a São Paulo factory complex into a cultural center, preserving industrial concrete sheds while building three striking towers linked by aerial walkways. Teatro Oficina 1984 renovated a burned-out building into a performance arena.
She also worked in scenery production, art, furniture, and graphic design. She died March 1992. In 2019 filmmaker Isaac Julien created “Lina Bo Bardi – A Marvellous Entanglement.”
Sources: @institutobardi , @wallpapermag , @archdaily
A new batch of Alice’s Egg Spoon has landed in our studio. Hand-forged by @slmetalworks , it’s the perfect companion for a weekend breakfast.
Here’s how @jessicamenda likes to use hers:
“We fire up the kiva in our living room, melt a little butter in the spoon, and crack an egg. As a self-proclaimed egg connoisseur—nothing cooks an egg quite like the Egg Spoon. For me, it tastes like the perfect cross between a crispy fried egg and a soufflé. On a perfect day, we’re eating this with some focaccia from Bread Shop with lots of butter, Maldon salt, and green chile.”
#FieldTripFriday — Today we’re in Montecito, California, at Lotusland, the 37-acre botanical garden created by Madame Ganna Walska.
Born Hanna Puacz in 1887 in Poland, Walska reinvented herself as an opera singer, adopting a stage name that evoked her favorite dance, the waltz. She performed in the United States and Europe from the early 1920s into the 1940s, though critics were harsh about her vocal abilities. She was married six times, four times to extremely wealthy men. Her fourth husband, industrialist Harold Fowler McCormick, lavishly promoted her opera career despite her lackluster reviews. His efforts inspired aspects of the screenplay for Citizen Kane.
In 1941, encouraged by her sixth husband, yogi and Tibetan Buddhism scholar Theos Bernard, Walska purchased the 37-acre Cuesta Linda estate in Montecito. She initially named it Tibetland and intended it as a retreat for Tibetan monks, but wartime visa restrictions prevented them from coming. After divorcing Bernard in 1946, she renamed the property Lotusland after the lotus flowers in her ponds.
Walska spent the next 43 years transforming the estate into one of the world’s top botanical gardens. She was especially fond of succulents and cacti, assembling collections in the 1940s when money was no object and import regulations were lenient. The garden contains rare and prehistoric specimens, some extinct in the wild. She worked with landscape architect Lockwood de Forest Jr. to create theatrical garden rooms featuring a horticultural clock with signs of the zodiac, a blue garden, a theatre garden, and collections of palms, cycads, aloes, ferns, and bromeliads. In 1971, facing a U.S. recession, she sold her jewelry collection for $916,000 and invested the money into Lotusland.
Walska died in 1984 at Lotusland, leaving the garden to the Ganna Walska Lotusland Foundation. The garden opened to the public in 1993 and is now home to 3,500 plant species.
Sources: @lotusland_gannawalska , @thegardenconservancy , Santa Barbara Independent, Frederic Magazine
Tomorrow is the last day to order for guaranteed Mother’s Day delivery. Here are a handful of giftable items in stock and ready to ship:
- Green Mug + Mt. Tam Tea — A ready-made pairing for slow mornings. Our ceramic mug alongside caffeine-free herbal blend of roasted buckwheat, lemon verbena, tarragon, and anise hyssop made from Leaves and Flowers.
- - Candles & Candleholders — For the mom who sets a beautiful table. Our beeswax candles and handcrafted candleholders bring warmth to any meal, any night of the year.
- Wooden Utensil Set — Solid black walnut or pear wood, made to last. The kind of kitchen tools that get better with use and time.
- Edmund Davies Platter — A wheel-thrown stoneware platter painted freehand with a quilt-like pattern of iron and cobalt oxide. Each one is unique.
- Vegetable Wrapping Paper — Wrap up your gift in this. An 1858 woodblock print by Japanese ukiyo-e artist Utagawa Yoshiiku, transformed into oversized sheets beautiful enough to hang on a wall.
The kitchen from antiques dealer @antoinebillore ’s Milan Design Week installation, created in collaboration with L’Artisan Parfumeur. The apartment was conceived as a space that could genuinely be lived in, styled with vintage objects, art, and furniture alongside Billore’s own first designs.
Photos: @theo_bobin
With Mother’s Day around the corner, we’ve been thinking about Lusia Murphy’s platter — made while she was pregnant with her first child. She delivered the run of platters shortly before delivering her baby. It feels right for the occasion: a piece designed to hold many things at once, made by someone in the middle of one of life’s biggest transitions. Limited stock remaining — order by Friday, May 1st for guaranteed delivery by Mother’s Day.
Photos: @taylorlbennett
Happy birthday to the wonderful @alicelouisewaters — a visionary whose commitment to quality, beauty, and thoughtful design continually inspires us. A mother to one, and to all! Her pioneering spirit shaped a movement and a generation — and was the germ of our Alice’s Collection: a tribute to living (and eating) with intention and artistry.
To celebrate, you can take 20% OFF any piece from the Alice’s Kitchen Collection (including those on preorder) with the code ‘HBDALICE!’ entered at checkout. But act fast! This birthday sale is one day only — the offer expires at midnight.
