“My adage is to always have something with age in a room—and you don’t want to be it!”
THESE WORDS FROM San Francisco designer Suzanne Tucker may seem a surprising epigraph for our California issue, dedicated to the land of perpetual new beginnings. But in working on it and our accompanying VERANDA Field Trip, Gardens of the Golden State (p. 49 for info on how to join us in November), we happened upon a stirring, if unexpected, discovery: the most enthralling art and design news in the Golden State is actually anchored in the old.
Take the San Francisco Fall Show, the longest-running art, antiques, and design fair on the West Coast, which is chaired by Tucker and returns for its 40th year this fall with a new beneficiary for its Opening Night Gala: the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Then there’s the new Rose Tarlow/melrose House flagship ❶ on North Robertson, the most spectacular new building in West Hollywood, which pays homage to California’s venerated mid-20th-century Sea Ranch development. Historic architecture is also top of mind in 2022 for the Palm Springs Art Museum, which is planning a major retrospective on the work of Albert Frey, father of
desert modernism ❷. Even the newcomers who flocked to such paradises as Santa Barbara and Napa (p. 68) during the pandemic are buying old or building new that feels like old in the ultimate act of design assimilation. “They recognize the history, it’s part of why they came, and they don’t want to kill the vibe,” says designer Peter Dunham.
To assume that the promise of reinvention—that most Californian of all dreams— depends upon eschewing the past would be to overlook how essential history is to the Golden State’s signature art form: legend making. (Even in the world of overnight success, legendary status, which implies enduring appeal, remains the Holy Grail.) This issue is filled with tales of icons coming into their own, from the prequel to Hollywood’s most famous house and a star-studded saga about next-gen jewelry collectors ❸ to a spotlight on a family-owned business revolutionizing hand-printed textiles ❹ and an essay on how waterwise landscapes signal
what’s next for the American garden ➎.
Of course, the most meaningful stories in the making are our own, of which antiques play an important role. Whether inherited or purchased, living with them, Tucker says, is humbling. “We don’t really own anything, we’re just the caretakers of these treasures that resonate with the voices of the past and make us feel a part of the larger human experience.” May her words inspire a season of legendary transformations at home.