Tucked into the hills of Los Angeles’s Topanga Canyon, set back from a winding road among colossal boulders and mature oak trees, is a low-slung home clad in concrete and old-growth redwood. Designed in the 1950s by architect William Earl Wear for George R. and Jean E. Anderson, the structure is actually just one of three buildings in a little compound now owned by creative force Beatrice Faverjon.
A multi-hyphenate artist originally from France who splits her time between California and Kauai, Hawaii, Faverjon makes ceramics, raises her two daughters, and renovates and designs houses that she rents out in both locations. The Wear home, however, is her family home, and the goal when she bought the place in 2016 was to not give it a makeover.
“My work was not to redesign it, but to restore it and bring it back to its original condition,” she says, acknowledging that work on the property continues today. Initially, few big changes were made beyond linking the main house with the guest house via a galley kitchen and sprucing up the bathrooms (which really meant just stripping them back and installing fixtures that would have been original to the architecture). Faverjon made other adjustments, like reupholstering the living room’s built-in furniture in tones of gold velvet, making an area near the carport her surfboard storage, and reviving the totally bare garden exclusively with Californian natives to recreate a proper habitat and help protect the land from fires and mudslides.
“Being surrounded by so much beauty, so much craftsmanship, makes me want to be a better artist, a better designer, to pay more attention to how things are made,” she reflects. “It’s a very positive influence in my life.” Ahead, in her own words, Faverjon takes us on a tour of this midcentury classic.
I consider this house like a piece of art that needed a lot of love because it had been altered over the years. My work was to find the plans, the original plans, and to restore it to its original condition. I wanted to complement the red of the wood with some gold, and I wanted to use velvet [on the sofas] because I felt that it would add to the warmth of the home. My dog is Diego, he follows me from room to room and always finds a pillow to sit on.
The smaller bedrooms are my favorite bedrooms. I built the bed and desks so the space is very efficient. One has a huge oak tree hanging above the windows. The other one is sunken in with the garden at the same level. They are perfect.
My studio is on site. In fact, Wear had built it and I enlarged it, and it’s a fully concrete structure. I’m very inspired by the colors that I can find in nature. I hand-build most of my ceramics and I really focus on very organic and light use of the clay.
I think this area was originally meant as a place to put tools and things like that. It’s under the carport. Because I’m a surfer, I decided to use it as my surf room, where I hang all my boards and and my wetsuit.
This is the original primary bedroom that is on the second floor. The ceiling is the same height as the smaller bedrooms.
Most of the furniture is built in and was designed by the architect Earl Wear, but I added a couple of free standing pieces that I love. They are not designers pieces, because I wanted the added furniture to complement the house, not be a statement piece. I especially like the armchair made of very old pine by the coffee table. Wear added some stone work, too, pouring concrete with some rocks. The sun plays an incredible role throughout the day and hits the dark wood through the windows to create this unique play between light and shadows. When I moved in, you had to go outside to get to the other building. I decided to reknit them, linking them by the galley kitchen that would go from one space to the other. I wanted something seamless. Now people really think that it’s one big house. Wear was very inspired by the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, so the house has a lot of similarities with Usonian Houses. They are built in harmony with nature.
I removed a lot of work that was done in the bathrooms. There was this huge tub made of marble with jets (very ’90s stuff). I put some terracotta tiles on the floor, put in a shower, and started to look for the original Crane sink.
I removed all the marble tiles and found this beautiful concrete, so I left it kind of raw.
The dining table is an English refectory table from the nineteenth century. I got it because I thought I needed a narrow table, but also there is something in the craftsmanship of this piece that goes well with with my house. There are two cantilevered balconies and we are working on them by reframing, waterproofing, and recladding them with old growth redwood. I’m very lucky and I’m very grateful to live in house that inspires me every day.
