THE HOMECOMING
A designer finally gets to use her fave artisans in her own house
One of the aspects that distinguishes Toronto designer Shelley Kirsch’s interiors is her practice of employing artisans and craftspeople in her work, giving the rooms she designs an artistic and singular beauty. Over the years, she has gathered a carefully curated roster of talented and creative people whose work — both original and fabricated from Kirsch’s own often distinctive designs — goes beyond mere decoration to the borderland of fine art.
But despite admiring and employing these artisans for so many years in clients’ homes, when it came to her own modest Toronto house, she laughs, it had been a case of “the shoemaker’s children.” Alongside a very busy design practice, she had spent the past two decades raising her sons with husband Howard Spring, a professor of ethno-musicology in the music department at Guelph University; their home, while beautiful and functional, hadn’t been updated since the boys were young.
Spring and two of their three sons are musicians, and the living room frequently doubled as a rehearsal space. “We sometimes had three rehearsals in a single day, which I loved, of course. But now all my musicians have moved on” — her sons have left for university or are living on their own, and Spring doesn’t rehearse at home quite as much — “so the need to make room for musicians isn’t as pressing.”
So a long-awaited opportunity arose: to hire the artisans she so admired for her own home.
The project began with two small windows in the hallway which, when the house was built in the 1920s, had originally housed standard- issue stained glass. She updated them with art- glass pieces inspired by the work of Scottish artist Mary MacDonald, the wife and collaborator of architect/designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh. The inserts were a design collaboration with the sisters Jane and Kathryn Irwin, who are collectively called Art Zone; Kirsch frequently uses them in her work to make insets for windows, French doors, cabinet fronts and even exterior doors. “I had the carpenter finish the windows with wider frame-style trim, because they are really a form of art,” she says.
The s t ai r c ase f eatures a wrought- iron banister by blacksmith Clare Scott- Taggart of Rusty Girl, inset with clear Plexiglas pickets, offering a subtle contrast of traditional with modern, and maximizing light transfer, since the hallway doesn’t receive much direct light. Underfoot, black- on- black ceramic hex tiles and custom black iron floor grates, from a Seattle forge called Pacific Register Company, update a traditional 1920s look. Scott-Taggart also crafted the hammered- steel fireplace surround in the living room; with its patinated, shimmering pale-grey finish, the surround’s convex shape recalls 1920s- modern Art Deco style, a particular passion of Kirsch’s.
Set between furniture from Italinteriors, the living room’s disarmingly simple pale grey oval coffee table was actually surprisingly complex to build. “I t was fabricated by Mike Fedynyszyn of Abbotsford Interiors, and consists of a sanded-glass top floating on steel pins; the perimeter and legs are ash stained pale grey, and the body is high- gloss lacquer. I’d had the idea for years — it was pretty complicated, but he was up to the task.” Fedynyszyn also created the crenellated crown mouldings throughout the main floor; they were inspired, says Kirsch, by a 1930s Paris apartment she saw years ago.
One of the most unabashedly lovely elements in the living room is the area rug, commissioned from Carol Sebert of Creative Matters. “It was inspired by Japanese brush paintings,” Kirsch says. “We originally designed this a few years ago in a much brighter orange- based scheme, but I rejigged it in quieter colours of grey and blue, so it acts like a foil to the more dy- namic elements in the room.
“You might say this is an ‘ archival’ design I resurrected.”
The dining room pays homage to artisan- design icons from an earlier period, with Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin table ( licensed from the original model the legendary architect designed for his home in Wisconsin), and classic and delightfully named Frisbee light pendants by Flos/ Arte Luce. At the wall is another creative collaboration retained from the home’s first renovation: a built- in shelving unit, made to order by Henry Rose, formerly of Dupont Woodworking Co-op, that combines bookshelf, art display and, originally, spaces for Kirsch’s collection of British pottery from between the world wars. ( The pottery now has pride of place in custom-lighted cubicles above the kitchen cabinetry, though a few more have snuck back onto the built-in’s shelves.)
This area also houses one of the home’s most striking artworks: a painting on metal depicting sketched figures at a seashore with a pair of airplanes flying overhead. It’s functional art of another kind: created by artist Scott Griffin, it’s made from a salvaged refrigerator door, whose rust and remnants of old insulation inform the image. Kirsch discovered Griffin’s work at the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition many years ago, she says, and notes, with almost maternal pride, that he has gone on to enjoy considerable success in the years since.
Putting more art — functional and fine — in your home, Kirsch says, custom-made items are not necessarily more expensive than off- the- shelf; as with all art, it has more to do with talent and taste than an unlimited budget. “Custom carpets, to name one example, are often competitively priced with a good prefabricated one; and you can get exactly the pattern and colour scheme you want.”
However, few artisans such as those on Kirsch’s go-to list advertise, relying instead on word of mouth to expand their trade. Sometimes they can be found at exhibitions, design shows or such shows as the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition, the One Of A Kind Show and OCADU’s and Sheridan’s annual student shows. “It’s a great way to discover new talent and to get a sense of your own taste,” Kirsch says.
Most of all, she firmly believes, the work of artists who use time- worn techniques to ply their craft is important. “I believe craft — things made with skill and ingenuity rather than just mass-produced — is what moves a society forward. And when you measure the pleasure that items like these give, there’s really no comparison.”