December 22, 2024Tamara Kaye-Honey doesn’t do forever homes — at least not for herself, though she regularly creates them for clients through her interior design studio, House of Honey. Since moving to Southern California some 20 years ago, she and her husband, Ryan Honey, have had three homes. And in New York City, where she previously lived after relocating from her native Nova Scotia to attend the Fashion Institute of Technology, she lived in a trio of apartments over the course of a decade.
Her latest move brought her and Ryan, together with their two then-mid-teenage kids, from a 1924 Tudor four-bedroom in Altadena to this 5,000-square-foot modernist-inspired contemporary four-bedroom situated on three acres of an otherwise uninhabited hilltop in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Glendale.
Having spent 10 years in the Tudor when their kids were younger, “I was getting that itch, as designers do, about what’s next,” Kaye-Honey recalls of the impetus for this move. She had been drawn to, and obsessed with, mid-century and California modernism ever since moving to the Golden State — “indoor-outdoor living and all these things I didn’t get growing up in Canada.”
After seeing the real estate listing for this place, designed in the mid-2010s, she couldn’t stop thinking about it.
“It sort of looked like Neutra’s Desert House,” she says, referring to the Palm Springs home that Vienna-born architect Richard Neutra built in the mid-1940s for Edgar J. Kaufmann, the Pittsburgh retail tycoon who a decade prior had commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to create Fallingwater in rural southwestern Pennsylvania. (The Desert House would become famous not only for its International Style architecture but also for the photos that Slim Aarons shot there of society grandees swanning around the pool.)
After she and her husband bought this contemporary version of a Neutra house, Kaye-Honey set out to do something akin to what she’d done with the Tudor.
In that house, she says, despite its age, “I didn’t have any antiques at all. It was very much contemporary.” Similarly here, she didn’t try to match the home’s style with her decorating — “I tried not to stick too much to mid-century, because it could become too one note, too much of a time capsule.”
Instead, she mixed traditionally handcrafted Moroccan rugs in muted of-the-moment colors with contemporary ceramics, accessories and art, “plus new pieces from designers, like Lawson-Fenning, “who do that laid-back California vibe so well,” and by Jason Koharic, a friend who created much of the lighting in the home.
To be sure, there are at least a few icons of mid-century design — not least among them a Charles and Ray Eames lounger and an Eero Saarinen Womb chair — because her husband really appreciates such pieces, she says. “And then, I do love an older antique mixed in, too, to throw things off.”
Explaining the warm, richly colored and layered look — which feels the furthest thing from the minimalist architecture of Neutra’s Desert House — she says, “I am a collector of all things, and a maximalist. I wanted it to feel activated and like people can really enjoy it.
“Let’s appreciate the architecture and design that’s around us, but not have it be too precious,” she adds. “It has to be used and loved and sat in.”
And even with the eclectic, maximalist mix of furniture and art, color and pattern, “people come for parties and still ask if the house is from the nineteen sixties,” she concludes with pride.
Here, 1stDibs takes a tour of the designer’s time-warping interiors.
Living Room
“I’m an only child, and I always knew as an adult I wanted to have a house where people could gather,” Kaye-Honey says. The living room she designed certainly helps realize that desire. That’s thanks in large part to its comfortable, loungy but nonetheless high-style seating, including a Hans Wegner Flag Halyard chair, a pair of Milo Baughman–inspired poufs from the 1970s and an oversize vintage lounge chair from James Mont. The work above the fireplace is by a Parisian artist.
Dining Room
Here, Kaye-Honey hung a chandelier by Maximilian Marchesani — designed around a twisting branch and found at Milan’s Nilufar Gallery — over a live-edge Parota dining table from Los Angeles furniture design company Croft House. To accompany the table, she selected Jean Prouvè Standard chairs. She picked lamps from Lambert & Fils to top the Danish modern credenza, above which she mounted a piece by artist Michael Wayne Hall.
Kitchen
The entertaining-ready house features a cooking area designed to feed a crowd, and to fit as many cooks as would want to get in on the action. Ceiling-mounted Geo glass sconces by Jason Koharik provide a subtle glow, which reflects off a stone-framed mirror, also by Koharik’s studio. The tiles on the side of the cabinets in the foreground are made of embossed leather.
Sunroom
“We don’t have any window coverings except in bedrooms,” says Kaye-Honey, noting that this helps connect the house to its wild hilltop surroundings. “For this particular architecture, they didn’t make sense. The previous owners had them, and I said, ‘Oh, gosh. That’s the first thing I have to remove.’ ” In the aptly named sunroom, abundant natural light plays off of a contemporary pendant by Audo Copenhagen and vintage pieces that include a plaster pedestal table in the style of John Dickinson, sheepskin-upholstered Brazilian chairs and a whimsical camel-shaped stool.
Powder Room
Kaye-Honey wrapped the powder room with an Osborne & Little wallpaper that drips with flowers. These floral forms are echoed in the vintage Murano glass chandelier she found for the room, seen here reflected in the diamond-shaped mirror. RBW sconces grace the walls flanking the vanity.
Primary Bedroom
The serene sleeping space Kaye-Honey created for herself and her husband is outfitted with a grass-cloth wall covering by Thomas Lavin, a vintage painting found at a Palm Springs gallery, side tables from 1stDibs and sconces from Lambert & Fils. The fiber art over the contemporary bed is by Cindy Hsu Zell.
Guest Bedroom
In a guest suite, vintage nightstands from 1stDibs flank a contemporary bed at whose foot stands a vintage upholstered waterfall bench. The chandelier above is by Lambert & Fils, and the art over the headboard is by Bradley Harms.
