More than a century old, Arts and Crafts architecture is certainly a venerated style. But it’s hardly a fashionable one. “The last time the style was popular was back in the 1980s, when Barbra Streisand was collecting Stickley furniture and ran up the market for it,” says interior designer Madeline Stuart. “No one would choose to build an Arts and Crafts house today,” she adds. But that’s exactly what a client asked her to do. “When it was going up,” she says with a smile, “passersby were visibly shaken.”
The businessman-philanthropist who built this cottage in Beverly Hills may have bucked convention, but in Stuart, he found a collaborator who could reimagine the style with contemporary flair. “Let’s face it: Arts and Crafts architecture can be cloistered and claustrophobic,” says the designer, who is known for her tailored yet feminine interiors. “And the furniture can become cumbersome and absolutely dreary. I wasn’t going to travel down that road.”