For his stylish study, Jay Jeffers worked with Willem Racké Studio to develop a decorative ceiling treatment that looked as though it was actual marquetry inlay. And in a vestibule connecting her primary bedroom and bathroom, Sindu Peruri of Peruri Design Company offered a nod to the Palace of Fine Arts—which can be seen from windows in both spaces—by copper-leafing its rotunda-style ceiling.
Glossy surfaces weren’t solely relegated to ceilings, but extended to walls, custom cabinetry, and furnishings. In her “Jewel Box Kitchen,” Kristen Peña of K Interiors engaged TBC Plaster Artisans to give her walls a sumptuous shine with a high-gloss Venetian plaster using Benjamin Moore’s Townsend Harbor Brown. In the grand foyer, Nancy Evars bathed the walls in a shiny shade of aubergine from Little Greene Paint. Just a few feet away, in the “Verdant” grand hallway, Lauren Berry matched a lacquered Arabesque console table from Randolph & Hein with her high-gloss blue-green walls.
Upstairs in a guest bedroom dubbed “To the Dark and the Endless Skies: A Bedroom Retreat,” Robbie McMillan and Marcus Keller of AubreyMaxwell created a custom semigloss green Sherwin Williams color that helped illuminate the otherwise brooding room. And, in her reception space, Triggs enlisted Willem Racké Studio to create the high-gloss Venetian plaster walls—in a moody, layered blue—to evoke some serious drama. “I’d been to the [Mark] Rothko exhibition in Paris and had the idea to create a space, with a similar depth of field found in his work, that begins to unfold as you stand in the room.”
A focus on bespoke lighting seemed to flip the switch on minimalist styling in a shift toward more opulence and abstract design. For her bathroom, Mill Valley–based designer Holly A. Kopman worked with artist Bobby Sarnoff and Dogfork Lamp Arts to develop a custom chandelier in homage to a Mazzega-designed lighting fixture she’d been obsessed with. “I thought this would be the perfect place for it,” she says of the water-jet-cut and baked-glass fixture made of interlocking C-shapes they’ve been prototyping for the last year.
In the grand hallway, Berry selected a sculptural light installation called “Sand & Sea–Cascading Waves” from London-based design studio Haberdashery. For the primary bedroom, Peruri selected a curvaceous Selene pendant lamp by Elsa Foulon to drop from the center of the space. And in the “Vaulted Jewel” bathroom off the main kitchen, Stephanie Marsh Fillbrandt of Marsh & Clark Design selected an antique patinated brass leaf chandelier to hang in contrast to the bright white subway tiles.
The number of creative opportunities afforded by such a grand Gilded Age property are almost too numerous to count, but through the generous sponsorship of Da Vinci Marble, Monogram/GE, PACE/Premium Bath and Kitchen, Hakwood, Abbey Carpet of San Francisco, Waterworks, and Sherwin-Williams, among many others, the home—currently on the market with Compass for an eye-popping $32 million—is filled to the rafters with innovative and thoughtful design ideas that transcend aesthetics to help make a tangible difference in the lives of local youth. Benefitting the San Francisco University High School Financial Aid Program, the monthlong event has raised over $18 million throughout its history to provide hundreds of deserving Bay Area students with world-class college preparatory education.