An improved shelf life

L10 | Sunday, August 14, 2016 | SFChronicle.com

AT HOME

An improved shelf life

Quirky collections of artwork, robot dolls and Burt Reynolds memorabilia trick out a home

By Leilani Marie Labong The lived-in patina of Peter Judd and Kelly Waters’ Potrero Hill apartment owes less to its heritage effects than to the personalized decor, shaped and assembled over the last 11 years.

Though the husband and wife are faithful modernists, hunting for midcentury pieces long before Design Within Reach made them de rigueur, Judd and Waters’ 900-square-foot home is hardly austere. Even if such sober simplicity were the couple’s style, achieving it would be nearly impossible given, for instance, Judd’s earnest entryway display of authentic Burt

Reynolds memorabilia, from cigar-packed humidors to monogrammed belt buckles.

Waters’ dining-room art piece, a kind of mobile made of vintage paintbrushes, also provides a moment of whimsy. It hangs over the first piece of furniture she ever designed, which is just as wink-worthy: The wooden table, charred in the Japanese tradition of shou sugi ban, is a tribute, she says, to her “dear mother’s terrible cooking.”

And so it goes in the JuddWaters wonder emporium, unapologetically brimming with the things that they — as good-humored, style- and culture-savvy people — appreciate

Kelly Waters and Peter Judd display a collection of “dolls,” above, designed in a collaboration with Visionaire, Kidrobot and fashion designers. Left: Judd’s collection of Burt Reynolds memorabilia

Photos by Beck Diefenbach / Special to The Chronicle

SFChronicle.com | Sunday, August 14, 2016 |

L11

“She has brought to the house stuff that’s not necessarily recognizable by name, but that’s more thoughtful and richer in design.”

Peter Judd, on his wife’s taste

Judd and Waters, left, in the living room of their Potrero Hill apartment. Below: Artwork adorns their home, from vintage paint brushes to a display by local artists.

Collecting 101

By Peter Judd and Kelly Lynn Waters 1. Spread your collections across your home. A decent-size collection confined to a single area can be overwhelming for one room.

2. Pay attention to the shape, size, color and texture of the pieces in your collection and arrange them accordingly.

Beck Diefenbach / Special to The Chronicle

3. Take your time. Years of hunting and gathering add layers and depth to your collection that you can’t replicate in a single buying spree.

Photos by Beck Diefenbach / Special to The Chronicle

An extensive vinyl record collection and rare skateboard deck

by Ryan McGinness, above, are on display. Right: A Diamond Chair by Harry Bertoia welcomes guests to the home.

enough to collect, sometimes en masse.

“I’m almost a stereotype of an art director-slash-graphic designer who loves this century,” says Judd, a partner at the Presidio advertising agency Hub Strategy & Communication. Aside from his Burt Reynolds collection, which stems from his father, a doppelganger of the brawny, mustachioed 1970s sex symbol, Judd also collects African American sports figures and bar-soapshaped “dolls” designed in a three-way collaboration with Visionaire, Kidrobot and such legendary fashion designers as Helmut Lang and Jean Paul Gaultier. There are also countless vinyl records spanning industrial to R&B, which were once tools of Judd’s trade as a former DJ and record-store shop boy, where he received all of his pay in the form of vinyl.

According to Waters, the records once “threatened to devour the living room” until the couple found a midcenturyinspired Coalesse sideboard that was deep enough to hold

the turntables and a minor percentage of the albums. (The vast majority of the collection is in storage; Judd says that estimating the number of records he owns would only cause intestinal distress.)

Waters, a senior designer at Gensler, prefers investing in singular pieces, except when it comes to pottery (including work

by Stan Bitters, Akio Nukaga and Emeryville’s own Sara Paloma) and cool design publications.

A spine bookcase between the dining room and living room features magazines the Gentlewoman, Cherry Bombe and books on such famed femmes as sculptor Louise Bourgeois and fashion columnist Diana Vreeland. “I have a thing for eccentric ladies,” Waters says.

“I think Kelly has better and more interesting taste than I do,” Judd says. “She’s brought to the house stuff that’s not necessarily recognizable by name, but that’s more thoughtful and richer in design.” In the living room, two Paper Chairs by Piero Lissoni for Capellini were purchased from San Francisco’s long-shut-

4. A finely curated collection is better than a noholds-barred collection.

Collect with a filter.

5. Consider fun and whimsical collections. A house full of somber collections can make the home vibe overly serious (taxidermy compiled beyond moderation is known to have this effect).

tered modern-design utopia Limn (where Waters once worked). To counter the aloof quality of their thin, effortless silhouettes, Waters layered the seats with amorphous felted “pelts” — Judd affectionately refers to them as “those crazy, dead animals” — that she crafted with textile artist Ashley Helvey.

The lighting in the home is also of Waters’ influence. Luckily, such steeply priced pieces as the Lindsey Adelman Clamp light in the dining room and the 1962 Castiglioni Brothers Taccia lamp, featuring a spunaluminum reflector, have fallen under a recent relationship mandate in which the husband and wife only partake in joint gifts to each other.

Other mutual contributions to the household include the Tweed rug by Kasthall in the living room, a neutral bouclé piece that replaced a flaming Nanimarquina Roses rug (“Sometimes the eye just gets tired of red,” says Waters), and “Morning Delivery,” a moody canvas of daybreak in San Francisco’s Chinatown by local painter Kim Cogan. The couple specifically acquired a Bensen sleeper sofa, upholstered in a gray Kvadrat wool textile, to accommodate spontaneous overnight guests who might pop in for conversation and bottomless experimental cocktails mixed by Judd but end up staying for Caesar salad and pasta with spicy broccoli and cau-

liflower, skillfully executed by Waters from recipes in the Zuni Cafe Cookbook.

The couple’s shared gifts for the home were perhaps foretold. Back in the day, the singletons brought into the relationship duplicate pieces that they had purchased independently — Eames side tables, for instance. And those Lissoni Paper Chairs? Peter had long coveted them from afar, unbeknownst to his future bride, who would happily procure them with her employee discount. “We’ve always known we were on the same page,” Waters says.

Leilani Marie Labong is a freelance writer. Email: home@sfchronicle.com