Photos by Randall Cordero & Blue Fier
Feature: House Proud: House of Simple Pleasures
March 1, 2004
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Minimal kitchen keeps things simple, as cooking at home is not a
priority. Appliances are invisible from the living area. (Click image to enlarge)Townsend knew Ross’ quirks well. The two met in the 1980s, when Ross was a project manager in the facilities division at the University of California at Los Angeles and Townsend was commissioned to revamp several campus buildings that date from the 1920s and ’30s. Ross, who had studied painting in college, had no intention of managing construction projects indefinitely. In addition to his responsibilities at UCLA, he was working long hours to build a freelance graphic design business. Success only increased the hours he put in, first in that business, and now in his present job. “I work like an animal during the day,” he says wryly, “then go straight to bed with a book or some prints.”
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Upstairs bath off
the study. (Click image to enlarge)The bedroom, which Townsend situated in the center of the first floor, is a round spare cocoon furnished with a sleek Italian bed and the “prints”—a wall of treasures from his collection of 15th-century Northern European engravings—with which Ross likes to retire. His taste in graphic art is elevated and arcane. He prefers the likes of Hans Baldung and Martin Schongauer, for example, to Albrecht Dürer, dismissing the relative availability of Dürer prints as “thick on the ground.” Because his collection is too large to exhibit in its entirety, he rotates the pieces on display. And he devotes much of his spare time to its “care and feeding,” going so far as to cut the mats for the prints himself. To create the bedroom’s tranquil, museumlike feeling, the walls and bedspread are free of dramatic color, as peacefully monochromatic as a black-and-white engraving.
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Downstairs library is for reading and
relaxation. Furniture and rug are an
eclectic mix of Hoffmann designs.
Framed prints are frequently rotated
to
prevent light damage. (Click image to enlarge)
Next to the bedroom is the library, where shelves with locking glass doors protect Ross’ books from dust. What had been a window-filled wall is now a fireplace, which adds coziness to the room and reduces the exposure of his books to the ravages of sunlight.
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