Feature: Desert Cool
January 1, 2008
Ted Tuttle has designed for the general and specific, the animate and inanimate, and if you’re a shopper, chances are he’s worked for you, too. At least in his capacity as head of Nordstrom’s interior planning, where for 19 years he determined the company’s overall aesthetic, designed identities for every department and initiated an original art program—all while opening and renovating over 100 stores, serving as a key player in the transformation of a regional brand into a national behemoth.
A Washington native, Tuttle studied landscape architecture at the University of Washington in Seattle before branching into interiors, his Nordstrom gig coming so close upon commencement it might well have started as a graduate program. "It was like school again," he says, "rigorous, demanding, where I could experiment, try and learn many things." An expert in space planning, problem solving, source finding and travel (Tuttle estimates he was on the road eight months a year), the designer also made time to tackle several Nordstrom executives’ homes, which eventually led him to start his own design practice in 1999. "It was a great, frenetic run, but the one-on-one of residential work is ultimately more fulfilling," he says. Not one lesson from that first chapter was forgotten, as his vacation house in Palm Springs makes clear.
"I wanted a cabin in the desert, something completely different from the midcentury houses and interiors that predominate here," says the Seattle-based Tuttle, who for 15 years made regular sun quests to the Coachella Valley, before opting to buy seven years ago. His pick? A 1,500-square-foot single-level house on a corner lot with a large yard and windows opening to the mountains—built in 1953. Tuttle’s vision triumphed over his aversion to the house’s midcentury roots. "The first time I saw the house, I knew exactly what I wanted to do—I even knew where I was going to put individual pieces of furniture and art," he says.
The shell was the starting point. No interior hallways meant no wasted space and, as Tuttle liked the rooms’ proportions, no structural alterations were necessary. There were, however, acoustic tiles on the ceilings, walls with too many colors and "five doors in five different styles leading to the outside," he says. Cleanup included making exterior doorways uniform and reconfiguring several interior openings to enhance flow.
Tuttle’s plan begged for a choice that would unite the various spaces, while establishing an overall tone. Unpretentious, homey and warm, pine was his solution, and Tuttle employed it for the floors, walls of the living room and den, and the ceilings of the main rooms—all whitewashed in a hue that complements the other walls’ cream color. Additional unifiers included a legion of light Roman shades for windows and several doors, millwork painted uniformly in a high-gloss white and textiles that kept to the creams and light browns, while varying in texture. "I like a neutral palette to link rooms and spaces," Tuttle says.
This backdrop allows art to pop, and helps show off furniture and decorative objects. Contemporary paintings burst with vibrant color in abstract form, while figurative pictures provide the perspectives of place and history, with a portrait of a mother and child even conveying a Sargent-like sense of 19th-century domestic security. Likewise, headline pieces such as the 19th-century Swedish armoire, red-and-black-lacquered Chinoiserie commode and 19th-century French four-poster bed look sculptural as well as functional against the neutral background. Although subtle commonalities—the gilt and intricate carving on the picture frames and the 19th century French–style furniture, the vertical stripes of upholstery that mirror the planks of pine—bring cohesion, it is the shared architectural elements and materials that create a harmonious whole, making the individual pieces more interesting, beautiful and provocative. Here, context is king.
Not that Tuttle takes any of it too seriously. Surrealism hangs from the wall in the entry to the open living/dining room—where a painting of a giant pear dangling from a string hovers above a leopard-print stool—and humor sleeps lightly in the bedrooms: in the master, a bedside table is a crazy confection of marble and gilt, and in the guest room, a stack of books makes for a literary nightstand. "Guests are always rooting through the books, so I thought I’d have some front and center," he says.
Nor is the outside—relaxed and inviting as patio and pool are—any less carefully composed or artfully integrated. The overhang sheltering the seating is lined with pine, and the blue-and-white Chinese garden seats, vases and jars echo Tuttle’s collection of blue-and-white porcelain in the dressing area, off the master bedroom. But where beiges form the interior’s backbone, outside is green as Tuttle’s thumb (naturally, he also gardens). "I did a grass block driveway and pedestrian entrance, dropped the pool in the lawn, and planted lemon trees, which surround the house like soldiers," he says, noting the high hedge as well. Green makes the screen against which blue pool and bluer sky unfold, and serves as a counterpoint for the lemon trees’ white seasonal flowers. Little with Tuttle is left to chance.
While carefully thought-out principles could prove constraining, for Tuttle they’re liberating, allowing a versatility and flexibility that neither tires nor repeats. "I’m finishing a high-rise apartment for a client in Seattle, where every piece of furniture is white leather," he says, "and my own Seattle penthouse is ultra-modern with waxed-concrete walls." Rather like good grammar, the structure lends itself to any style. The art, however, is in the composition.
Ted Tuttle, 206.329.2373
advertisement
