Material World: Glass artist shatters convention L5
Golden Gate Gardener: Strange beauty in the yard L3
Home&Garden San Francisco Chronicle and SFGate.com | Sunday, June 13, 2010 | Section L
Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle
AT HOME WITH JAY JEFFERS
Jay Jeffers in the dining room of the Castro district home he shares with partner Michael Purdy. “Michael and I would like to try high-rise living,’’ he says.
The house as style lab Edwardian cottage is an incubator for S.F. decorator’s evolving tastes By Leilani Marie Labong SPECIAL TO THE CHRONICLE
“Soul is the most important part of a home,” says San Francisco interior designer Jay Jeffers, 41, in the dining room of his 1908 Edwardian cottage in the Castro, wistfully gazing up at its eclectic gallery-style arrangement of art — mostly portraits of unknown people that portray, en masse, a captive audience. In this moment, Jeffers’ words are tinged with nostalgia. The spectators appear
solemn and sympathetic. The concept of soul — or, rather, the history that shapes it — has been resonating strongly with the designer lately, as new inspiration beckons and he prepares for a literal vertical move. Many times since Jeffers purchased the 1,500-square-foot home in 2001, he and his partner, Michael Purdy, have stood on its wraparound deck, where their survey of the far-reaching eastern views has unknowingly (read: auspiciously) grazed the tops of the sparkling new residential towers in SoMa and Rincon Hill. “Michael and I would like to try high-rise living,” says Jeffers. The decision was, understandably, bittersweet for the couple, considering the pivotal occasions that have transpired here (cue sentimental music): star-studded Independence
Joe Fletcher Photography
Persimmon, a shade that Jeffers considers a neutral, is echoed throughout the house.
Day bashes (who knew that Nate Berkus could draw such a crowd?); the arrival of Jeffers’ cocker spaniel, Kingsley, a surprise gift from Purdy several Thanksgivings ago; the cou-
ple’s celebratory soiree commemorating their impromptu City Hall nuptials in 2004. “If the house were on fire, I’d grab the Venetian mirrored frame with our wedding photo,” says Purdy. Of course, there is also Jeffers’ career to reflect upon. Over the past decade, the twobedroom, 2½-bath dwelling — essentially his style laboratory — has gallantly served as a canvas for three design makeovers, each a hallmark of the decorator’s evolving tastes. The first manifestation was a bold color expression of chocolate-brown walls and textiles ornamented with pops of lacquered chartreuse midcentury furnishings. “Ten years ago, midcentury was still innovative,” says Jeffers, whose keen eye for forthcoming trends, strongly evident in each of his
Jeffers continues on L4
THE DIRT By Joe Eaton and Ron Sullivan
Art-filled garden a fitting legacy In Big Daddy’s Complete Rejuvenating Community Garden, art, flowers and vegetables flourish atop an unlikely sliver of asphalt wedged between MacArthur Boulevard and Interstate 580 in Emeryville. The eponymous Big Daddy, local artist Vickie Jo Sowell told us, is the late Mr. Green, who ran a detail shop, car wash and gas station on the Peralta Street lot. He was a minister — so dignified she remembers him
by his honorific, not his first name — and a neighborhood guardian angel when she moved there in the 1980s. After his passing, a grandson continued the business, but a fire destroyed the buildings and the lot lay empty until 2002, when Sowell approached the city of Emeryville about reclaiming it as gardening space. Now the city leases the lot from Mr. Green’s landlord for $250 every three years. Each of 20 participating fami-
lies pays $35 a year for water. Finessing the problem of contaminated soil, Sowell’s crew built raised planting beds on top of the asphalt. West Oakland resident Deb Lozier, who’d collaborated with Sowell on public art projects, signed up quickly for a bed. “We live in a live-work building with no garden space, just a little spot for a worm box,” Lozier said. “We were excited to participate. It’s really great to have the
Dirt continues on L5
Mike Kepka / The Chronicle
Vickie Jo Sowell, who created Big Daddy’s Complete Rejuvenating Community Garden, checks her crops.
L4 | Sunday, June 13, 2010 | San Francisco Chronicle and SFGate.com
Photos by Joe Fletcher Photography
Contemporary plaid upholstery adorns the stately custom bed frame in interior designer Jay Jeffers’ master bedroom, above. At right: Jeffers’ living room is a mix of vibrant hues and patterns.
Turning home into a style lab Jeffers from page L1
spirited tableaux, has made him the darling of national design publications and decorator showcases. The second phase — a brief DIY chapter in Jeffers’ oeuvre — is best represented by a lattice wall pattern the designer fashioned from pink and tangerine grosgrain ribbon in the master bedroom. Though his slight smirk appears to convey otherwise, he notes that a little elbow grease in the name of inspired decor does make a soulful home. “Cheap-chic design can be a lot of fun,” he says. Ultimately, the homespun craftiness that typifies San Francisco’s raging DIY scene wasn’t a match for Jeffers’ sophisticated exuberance. Inspired by the legacies of design pioneers Albert Hadley, David Hicks and Dorothy Draper, Jeffers has developed a unique ability to rescind trends just as skillfully as he spots them. “I’m so over anything that’s stuffed,” he says of the taxidermy infestation — a style too grim, perhaps, for a designer whose optimistic style is revealed through his dauntless use of color and pattern. Third time’s charming Jeffers’ dexterity with these design axioms is evident in the home’s third and current iteration of decor, where the highimpact mix of vibrant hues and majestic motifs is refined by classic furnishings, thoughtfully edited. “Antiques — or any ob-
The Jay Jeffers portfolio
includes a new work island and smooth concrete countertops (the ubiquitous granite surfaces didn’t stand a chance here). While the kitchen is certainly one of the home’s most celebrated spaces — ground zero for the couple’s morning coffee-andnewspapers ritual and legendary dinner parties — it’s the adjacent sitting room that hosts their more contemplative moments, quietly observed by the stoic man portrayed in the room’s showpiece (city views notwithstanding): a sizable masterwork by New York painter Forrest Williams.
Joe Fletcher Photography
Persimmon is echoed in the plaid-mosaic backsplash, part of Jeffers’ recent kitchen remodel. The renovation includes a new island and concrete countertops.
jects with history, old or new — are a great way to add soul to a house,” he says. Contemporary plaid upholstery, for instance, adorns the stately custom bed frame in the master bedroom, made even more dignified by its close proximity to a much-beloved antique Laszlo chest. The playful, electric-green pattern by Studio Printworks emblazoning the guest-bedroom walls surprisingly plays second fiddle to a geometric metallic-gold headboard and curvy gilded mirror. And the generous swath of dramatic persimmon paint in the living room — where Jeffers and Purdy decompress at day’s end
with a little fireside TV viewing — is tempered by slate-gray moldings and such pedigreed vestiges as the much-beloved Art Deco highboy cabinet by Lane. “There are some pieces I don’t have an attachment to, but that’s not one of them,” says Jeffers. “I just love how it looks. I don’t think I could ever let it go.” The persimmon shade (which, incidentally, Jeffers actually considers a “neutral”) is echoed throughout the house, as in the Waterworks plaid-mosaic backsplash, part of the recent kitchen remodel. “It was the only room in the house that needed major surgery,” says Jeffers. The renovation, as functional as it is handsome, also
Matthew Millman
Living room: “This is our vision of the industrialchic look that’s in vogue right now — pairing materials like steel, glass and wood with luxe textures and unexpected color.”
Prized artwork “I think I’d have to take him with me if the house were on fire,” says Jeffers of his most prized work of art. It’s a nearly impossible distinction to make among a treasured collection — “It’s a huge part of the soul here,” he notes — that includes a photorealistic watercolor by Sheldon Berkowitz, a Christopher Brown figurative bird study, and a chair portrait by local artist Ada Sadler, who painstakingly works with a three-bristle brush. However, upon further consideration, Jeffers jokes, “In case of fire, I’d probably just open a bottle of wine and go down with the ship.” A statement made in jest, indeed, yet no truer words have ever been spoken by designer about a house that he loves, and soon will leave. E-mail comments to home@sfchronicle.com.
BLUESTONE MAIN
Matthew Millman
Master bedroom: “The architecture — and the client — called for a sophisticated, traditional space that showcased antiques. The master bedroom features a mismatched pair of 18th century Italian commodes and a whimsical pair of 1940s bergere chairs upholstered in Fortuny fabric. It all sits on a 18th century Oushak rug.”
Cesar Rubio
Entry: “Casual elegance was the vision for this young family in Pacific Heights. This grand foyer is an elegant, sunny sitting area in which to relax and read, but it can also be transformed into a large dining area for entertaining.”
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Stylemaker Spotlight: Designing the post-baby home L5
Golden Gate Gardener: Organic cures for sick roses L3
Home&Garden San Francisco Chronicle and SFGate.com | Sunday, August 22, 2010 | Section L
Michael Macor / The Chronicle
Charlie Simpson, 7, visits the backyard henhouse in Belmont that provides fresh eggs for his family, which no longer eats prepackaged food.
Taking back the simple life By Leilani Marie Labong Brant Ward / The Chronicle
Above, vegetables gathered from the HowardGayeton family’s 5-acre farm in Petaluma. Right, Laura HowardGayeton and daughter Tuilerie walk on the farm.
SPECIAL TO THE CHRONICLE
An inspirational, grassroots movement is afoot in the Bay Area (yes, another one), and it’s going to make the world a better place. No, really. Granted, this region has sprouted its fair share of grassroots movements; however, this particular crusade — dubbed radical homemaking by New York writer and pioneering radical homemaker Shannon Hayes — seems particularly well suited to our socially responsible, food-obsessed, eco-zealous neck of the woods. In her recent book, “Radical Homemakers” (Left to Write Press; $23.95), Hayes, 36, makes a deeply personal and wellBrant Ward / The Chronicle
Homemakers continues on L6
GARDEN
Tomato growers play catch-up By Laramie Treviño SPECI AL TO THE CHRONICLE
If you are starving for home-grown, vine-ripened tomatoes, stand in line — a very long queue extending along the coast of the Bay Area and then some. It’s the height of summer, yet most gardeners are bereft of the succulent orbs that are usually abundant this time of year. As are seasonal-fruit event organizers. And restaurants specializing in seasonal
local fare. “Because of the crazy weather, they are taking longer to ripen,” says Carolyn Villa-Scott of the South Bay. With fog thick until midmorning most days around the Bay Area, the heat needed by warm-weather plants such as tomatoes is at a premium. In her role as horticultural consultant at Yamagami’s Nursery in Cupertino, she scrambled to line up local tomatoes for the annual tast-
ing held Aug. 14. While she was able to buy fruit from her sources in Southern California, she came up dry when tapping locals. She sent out a plea to the Santa Clara County master gardeners, among others, to little avail. At the nursery she counsels customers to always plant at least one early variety such as ‘Stupice,’ which started ripening last month. All-time backup ‘Early Girl,’ a hybrid usually ready
Tomatoes continues on L4
Mike Kepka / The Chronicle
The cool Bay Area summer hasn’t produced enough heat for many vine-ripened tomatoes, causing restaurants to scramble. But mature green tomatoes can be picked and ripened. See L4.
L6 | Sunday, August 22, 2010 | San Francisco Chronicle and SFGate.com
FROM THE COVER
Leading a domestic revolution Homemakers from page L1
supported case — to be expected from someone who holds a doctorate in sustainable agriculture and community development from Cornell University — for shunning consumer culture in favor of a life of complete and utter domesticity. Although she had eyes on a college professorship, Hayes jumped off the career track a decade ago, along with her husband, Bob, a former county planner. Aching to “honor their deepest dreams and values” (in the radical-homemaker vernacular, these virtues include family, community, social justice and the environment), the couple moved back to her family’s farm in upstate New York, where, she writes in her book, “subsistence farming, food preservation, barter and frugal living are a matter of course.” A radical notion While the idea of banishing all dependence on wealthy corporations to practice an Emersonian life of simplicity, authenticity and self-reliance resonates soundly with many Bay Area residents — these are tenets of the 1960s counterculture, after all — making such a progressive lifestyle change seems, in a word, drastic. But they’re not called radical homemakers for nothing. “Our society has indoctrinated us with a lot of fear,” says Hayes, who writes books for a (modest) living — fortified, of course, by the money saved from the farm’s ready supply of grass-fed beef and lamb, pastured pork and poultry, and abundant fruits and vegetables. “Fear of living without a formal job title, the security of a regular paycheck, stepping outside of our educational infrastructure or even the corporate food system. Radical homemakers are pretty tired of all that fear.” Like Hayes, Petaluma resident Laura HowardGayeton, 41, also renounced the rat race — she was a TV producer in Hollywood from 1993 to 2003 — to reclaim her rural East Coast upbringing, in which her family grew its own food and earned money
through a home-based decorative-herb business. “A career was expected of me. That’s why I got a college education,” Howard-Gayeton says. “But my job required spending three hours a day commuting in traffic and eating takeout four nights a week. I was on a crash course to burnout.” This realization put into motion a fortuitous series of events that would eventually bring her full circle, back to the radical homemaking of her youth: Howard quit her job, studied yoga in India and met her husband, photographer Douglas Gayeton, in Tuscany, where he was shooting a PBS documentary on, of all fateful things, the slow food movement. The couple purchased a 5-acre Petaluma farm in 2004; there, they keep beehives for honey, grow a cornucopia of fruits and vegetables (which they trade with local merchants for bread, meat and poultry) and raise goats — a typically cleaner and less energyconsumptive enterprise than commercial cow dairies — for their thriving organic goat’s milk ice cream business, Laloo’s. “We’ve worked very hard to have a small carbon ‘hoofprint,’ ” says Howard-Gayeton, who also donates her time to Ladies Who Launch, a foundation to help female entrepreneurs. “Doing things that are going to be meaningful to the next generation is such a refreshing change from the toxicity of my life in Hollywood.” Thinking globally Pursuing this kind of redemptive work is typical of radical homemakers. Belmont resident Robin Johnson Simpson, who chronicles her radical-homemaking pursuits on her blog, Frustrated Farmgirl (frustra tedfarmgirl.wordpress. com), is laying the groundwork for a homebased soap-making business that sources palm kernel oil and shea butter from fair-trade farmers. “I get excited when I think about creating a living wage for people in the developing world,” says Johnson Simpson, a
Photos by Michael Macor / The Chronicle
Michael Macor / The Chronicle
“A career was expected of me. That’s why I got a college education. But my job required spending three hours a day commuting in traffic and eating takeout four nights a week. I was on a crash course to burnout.” Laura Howard-Gayeton, former TV producer
former fourth-grade teacher who, in addition to concocting such ambrosial soap scents as lavender-chamomile and green tea-bitter orangemint, homeschools her two young children, volunteers with Akili Dada (a nonprofit that grooms young Kenyan women for a career in politics), tends a bountiful garden, raises chickens and bees, and prepares three square organic meals each day for her family. “When you make the decision to opt out of eating prepared foods, cooking takes time,” she says. The term “opt out” is rampant in Johnson
Simpson’s speech, further emphasizing the revolutionary nature of radical homemaking. Recently, her family “opted out” of the daily grind for two months to attend a Christian retreat in Boston (“We had intellectual issues with trusting the Bible,” she says); husband Charlie, a marketing director in Silicon Valley, is slowly “opting out” of corporate life (he’s suffering stressrelated health problems); the couple is “opting out” of homeownership in favor of a smaller, simpler space (“We’re still cozying up to the idea of giving up the equity,” she says). It appears that the
Top, Robin Johnson Simpson wears goggles and rubber gloves to make soap in her kitchen. Left, several varieties of the soaps. Above, Johnson Simpson with children Charlie, 7, and Elizabeth, 5, in the family’s backyard garden.
simple life doesn’t come easy. A little perspective The fact remains that such grand gestures, while admirable, aren’t prerequisites for many who consider themselves radical homemakers at heart. Jessica Carew Kraft, a radical homemaker who, like many of the others, harvests her own produce, cans her bumper crops, mixes her own cleaning solutions, drives a hybrid (“Like a good San Francisco liberal,” she says) and organizes a babysitting co-op in her community, also happens to have a fullfledged career outside the home as a professor of sustainable design at UC Berkeley. “We need to start looking at our careers as a sine wave,” says Kraft, 32. “We can make a difference in both worlds at the appropriate time in our lives.” She then launches an eloquent, and refreshingly honest, manifesto
about the fallibility of radical homemakers who start viewing their domestic actions as a global panacea. “At the end of the day, after you’ve recycled gray water into your garden, biked to work and washed a hundred diapers by hand, you’ve done a lot of good for yourself, but have you really changed the world?” Kraft asks. “Radical homemaking can become too selfrighteous.” The clarity of Hayes’ original vision proves to be a good touchstone for those die-hard crusaders who may, in their earnestness, lose sight of the prize, and even for those with just a passing curiosity about the movement. “I want to see people free to live by their values, first and foremost, not their fear,” says the author. “I expect this will seem less and less outlandish as time goes on.” E-mail comments to home@sfchronicle.com.
Laura Howard-Gayeton with daughter Tuilerie, husband Douglas and two prized goats.
Photos by Brant Ward / The Chronicle
Eggs from the family’s henhouse in Petaluma are traded for goods from local merchants.
Laura Howard-Gayeton and her daughter Tuilerie Gayeton corral a chicken on their ranch in Petaluma. Howard-Gayeton was a TV producer in Hollywood until she decided to quit the rat race in 2003.