Mark Burkett garden
Mark Burkett and Jay Pearson
Italian vases from the 1950s and 1960s (with a few from the ’20s and ’30s) are displayed on the mantel in his living room, which, like most of the rooms in his house, features small lamps. “I like accent lights instead of an overhead glare, and I use a lot of dimmers,” he says. “Every room has three or four lamps in the corners.” Upstairs are two bedrooms and one bath, and Burkett and Pearson use the entire floor as a master suite. The larger bedroom contains a bed, dressers and a desk; they transformed the second bedroom into a walk-in closet, with hanging racks and one wall lined with four sleek, black dressers from La Différence. “Every woman who comes into this house loves that room,” says Burkett. Over time, he’s changed the wall colors. “I used to have white
sunroom The sunroom was originally a small side porch that Burkett enclosed.
patio When Burkett installed weatherproof glass in the sunroom, he moved the original windows to an adjacent space to create an outdoor living area.
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riod,” Burkett says. He mixes mission and mid-century pieces together throughout his home. “I like the color, I like the lines and I like the style,” he says. Burkett showcases his collection of pink elephant glassware from the 1950s in one of two lighted corner shelves made out of old windows in the dining room. “It’s just fun stuff,” he says. “It’s the thing that got me started collecting.” On the opposite wall, Fiestaware also is displayed in a glass cabinet made from old windows, and a large glass dining-room table from La Différence fills the center of the room. “I like the clear glass with so much other stuff going on in here.” Burkett also collects paintings by Carlo of Hollywood, and they fill the house with their trapezoid-shaped frames. He found the first one at an antiques mall. “The asymmetrical frame caught my eye,” he says. After that, he kept looking for more. He’s found Carlo’s work in a variety of different mediums, but despite searching for years, he hasn’t been able to find much information on the artist. “I think Carlo sketched the originals, then other people finished them,” he says. Today he has about 35 Carlo paintings displayed throughout his house. He also used to collect paintby-numbers paintings and still displays a few favorites in his dining and living rooms. The rest of the other 300 or so are stored away.