Interior Design

Four Los Angeles firms have been named in the annual ranking of Interior Design magazine's "100 Interior Design Giants of 1989." Highest placed of the Los Angeles firms were Reel/Grobman & Associates, as No. 11. Others cited were: Architectural Interiors Inc./Interior Design Inc., Steinmann Grayson Smylie and Chaix & Johnson International Inc. For the eighth consecutive year San Francisco's Gensler & Associates was ranked the No. 1 Interior Design Giant.

The gig: Meridith Baer is the founder and force behind the house-staging, furnishing and interior-design company that bears her name. Started in 1998, Meridith Baer & Associates has about 100 employees, upholstery and drapery making capabilities and a 130,000-square-foot furniture warehouse in Vernon. At any given time, she has about 170 homes outfitted. Baer has warehouses in Connecticut and Florida and is expanding slowly into Manhattan. The accidental stager: The University of Colorado at Boulder journalism graduate and onetime screenwriter always loved fixing up homes, especially those she was leasing.

James Northcutt, interior designer whose work included major hotels and resorts worldwide. Founder of Los Angeles-based James Northcutt Associates, he was known for classic design and introducing tasteful residential looks to luxury hotels. He decorated such local showplaces as the renovated Hotel Bel-Air and Checkers Hotel in Los Angeles, the new Peninsula Beverly Hills and the Surf & Sand Hotel in Laguna Beach.

The most surprising thing about West Hollywood's Gray Gallery isn't that in the 13 months since opening its doors the combination interior-design studio and jewelry boutique has emerged as a key resource for stylists looking to borrow unique jewelry to accessorize their celebrity clients. The surprise is how much of that red-carpet clientele is male. Pieces from Gray's collection of vintage cuff links, watches and rings have appeared on A-list actors including Johnny Depp, Jeremy Renner, David Boreanz and Ryan Gosling.

It's 10 a.m. and Ian Schrager has way too much energy for someone just in from New York and just out of morning meetings. As if fueled by multiple espressos, he bounds across the lobby of his new hotel, Le Mondrian, hand outstretched, a wide grin interrupting his rocky mug. He sits down in the almost empty restaurant and-- bam --lands in the middle of a conversation. "I have to say," he says, looking out the window at a hazy Los Angeles, "my wife is the best thing that ever happened to me.

Vincent Fourcade, 58, whose sumptuous Rothschildean style decorated the homes of celebrities and inspired a set in the film "Bonfire of the Vanities." Interior design by the firm he founded with his longtime partner, Robert Denning, became a symbol of wealth and status in Europe and the United States. They made wide use of damasks, cottons and chintz for fabrics, velvet wallpaper, tasseled curtains, fringed lampshades and French furniture.

Recliner salesman Mike Bartee readily rattled off the virtues of his product: comfort, durability and practicality. Beauty, however, was not on the list. "They're not sold as a thing of beauty," said Bartee, a salesman at the La-Z-Boy Showcase Shoppe in Glendale. "They're built for comfort." Three feet wide and upholstered in synthetic fabric or Naugahyde, the traditional recliner has been a dream for couch potatoes and a nightmare for decorators.

Clayton Olivier once bumped his forehead in a doorway with such force he knocked himself out. Guy Earl used to shave on his knees to avoid back strain from bending over the bathroom sink. Both are well over six feet tall, and they are among many who live rather uncomfortably in a world structured for people of average size who must strain their necks to establish eye contact with the likes of Olivier and Earl.

When baby boomers were kids, a well-decorated, middle-class ranch house in Southern California wasn't complete without a touch of the Wild West: a wagon-wheel sofa or maybe bunk beds with cowboy-and-Indian-patterned spreads. This faux cowboy chic has long been considered kitsch. But now collectors and historians are re-evaluating the style and--hold on to your hat, Roy Rogers--ranking a few California Rancho pieces with Craftsman collectibles.

My children will starve in the new kitchens. They won't recognize the refrigerators (there'll be more than one), and they won't be able to find the dishwasher. They'll stand in the middle of what looks like a family room, empty plates in their hands, surrounded by juicers, blenders, pasta and bread makers, and whine, "There's nothing to eat." But they do that anyway.

There was a roll call, a familiar voice over the public address system and even the fan with blue hair heckling opponents when they shot free throws. Good thing UCLA also remembered to pack Joshua Smith and Reeves Nelson for the start of its season-long show. The interior duo helped the Bruins overcome a mostly ragged performance during an 80-72 exhibition victory over Cal State San Bernardino on Sunday at Citizens Business Bank Arena in Ontario. Smith's 26 points and seven rebounds were complemented by Nelson's 16 points, 10 rebounds and one commandment to his teammates.

Harry Lawenda Interior design firm's creative force Harry Lawenda, 87, an interior designer who was the creative force behind the influential Kneedler Fauchere design firm founded by his late wife, Dorothy Kneedler Lawenda, died at his Los Angeles home on Thursday, one day before his 88th birthday. He had non-Hodgkins lymphoma, according to company spokeswoman Susan Ducey. A New York native, Lawenda moved to San Francisco in 1949 after studying at the Parsons design school in New York.

Sited on a ridge top with city-to-ocean views, this Craftsman-exterior home was designed for its previous owner, actor James Woods. Inside, architect Lise Claiborne Matthews created the element of surprise with light-filled, contemporary interiors and bands of inlaid mahogany on the walls that wrap around corners, climb, dip, narrow and broaden from room to room. Location: 1520 Gilcrest Drive, Beverly Hills 90210 Asking price: $9,995,000 Previously sold: In 2002 for $5 million Year built: 1996 House size: Three bedrooms, four bathrooms Lot size: Nearly an acre Features: Stone and oak floors, five fireplaces, media room, library, gym, swimming pool, ponds, mature sycamores and pines About the area: In the first half of the year, 131 single-family homes sold in the 90210 ZIP Code at a median price of $2,726,000, according to DataQuick.

Shifting reading habits and a brutal recession may have caused the demise of Domino, Metropolitan Home and House & Garden, not to mention smaller publications such as Oprah Winfrey's O at Home and Martha Stewart's Blueprint, but a surprising phenomenon has been developing elsewhere: While shelter magazines fold in the States, a new generation of interior design titles has taken off in Brazil, Russia and, most aggressively, China. We're not talking digital click-throughs, the online decorating guides such as Lonny that have sprung up here, sometimes staffed by writers and editors who were laid off during the industry meltdown.

Miriam Seegar Whelan Actress became an interior designer Miriam Seegar Whelan, 103, an actress from the early days of talking films who was married to director Tim Whelan, died Sunday of age-related causes at her home in Pasadena, said her daughter-in-law Harriet Whelan. After her acting career ended, Whelan became an interior designer in Los Angeles. She was born Sept. 1, 1907, in Greentown, Ind., where she and her sisters enjoyed play-acting as children.

Mixing old and new For Lucinda and David Schiff's renovation of a 1927 house, interior designer Sasha Emerson refurbished vintage furniture and had new pieces made. Some of her strategies for fixing and mixing the old and the new: Shopping: Before buying something at a flea market or vintage store, imagine where it will go. Ask two key questions: Does the piece in question integrate with what's already there? And can it fit in several places in the house if the first location does not work out?

IN the new movie "Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day," Amy Adams plays an entirely delectable American starlet looking for love and fame in pre-World War II London. Her performance lives up to her character's name, Delysia (say it out loud: dee-LEE-see-ah), and indeed, the apartment she inhabits is as scrumptious as a box of fine, liqueur-infused French chocolates. "We used every beautiful texture you can get," production designer Sarah Greenwood, an Oscar nominee for "Atonement," says of the London set for "Miss Pettigrew.

Lois Mirkovich was delighted when she and her husband inherited his grandmother's classically styled furniture but wasn't crazy about the silk fringe on the sofa and chair skirts. She likes a more contemporary look, and she planned to reupholster. But as she flipped through stacks of interior design magazines, the Irvine resident changed her mind and kept the fringe because she saw that it, along with tassels and cord--called passementerie in design circles--is popular again.

Internationally renowned architect and interior designer John Saladino says that when he first visited this property in 1985, he was "possessed and smitten" but, with a large house in Connecticut, unable to consider buying. The Montecito villa came on the market 16 years later, and things were different: He had just sold his East Coast home and his circumstances had changed. But so had the villa. It had become a "total ruin" requiring a new roof, foundation and almost everything in between.

Ruben Reyes is making himself at home in his new apartment on San Pedro Street in downtown L.A., setting out his phone and his CDs, planning to shop for food and cleaning supplies. After years on the streets — including San Pedro — as well as in shelters and in prison, and after just one night in the Charles Cobb Apartments, Reyes, 31, says he "feels like a king." "It's nice, it's gorgeous," he said, sitting on the bed — a bed designed, along with the nightstand and dresser, to fit the small apartment and to be durable, but also to be as appealing furniture designed for people with money to spend.