Los Angeles Times
Thursday, November 26, 1998

INTERIORS/Bringing fun and function into our homes.
Crazy for Custom

• Tired of mass-Produced Items, People Are Opting Instead for Those That Are Handmade and One of a Kind By Jeannine Stein, Times Staff Writer

Step inside Pearl Maremont’s Montana Ave store, Raw Style, and it’s obvious that this isn’t your ordinary furniture shop.  It’s a riot of color and a mishmash of shapes and designs, from the hand-painted chair decorated with dizzying rows of dots to the handmade ceramic bank shaped like a toaster and the table with faux marble top that looks, even on close scrutiny, like the real thing.

“People say, ‘What do you like about it?’ “ Maremont says. “I just say, it’s antistyle.’ It’s going against what is expected, putting totally contradictory objects together to create style and balance.”

Its also part of the a growing trend in American interiors: filling homes with furniture, accessories and decorative items that are handcrafted and one of a kind.

This is not about crocheted toilet paper covers, which to some are still the embodiment of handmade crafts. It is about skilled artisans who work in wood, glass, clay metal, textiles and other media to create unique, often functional, home furnishings.

It’s anticookie-cutter decorating. For years homeowners and apartment dwellers felt secure only if every inch was decorated in American country, cottage style or contemporary.

They’re becoming bolder now, missing tribal masks with antique Wedgwood. Credit the popularity of the Home & Garden Television cable channel, an increased interest in antiques and vintage items, and the scads of high-gloss shelter magazines, all of which encourage individual style and eclecticism.

Margaret Kennedy, editor of House Beautiful, offers another explanation: “This counteracts the sensibility of everything being so high tech. I was recently at a furniture in New York, and a lot of the participants started out thinking they would be architects but suddenly discovered the creativity of working with their hands.  I think it’s an antidote to technology, and the appreciation of these things is being reassessed.” Maremont agrees.

“You practically have no contact in any way with humanity anymore,” she says. “This gives you that. There’s someone doing this with their hand, their thought, their love.”

She Dreamed of Having a Gallery Type Store

Pearl Maremont insists on calling the men and women whose furnishings crowd her store artists.

“To me that’s the natural thing.” She says. “This is what they do for a living.”

She has more than 50 artists from around the country represented in her Santa Monica store, including June McCloskey, who adorns furniture and decorative items with bright, layered dots ($25 to about $1000); ceramic artists Pati Holly, who creates fat, rounded piggy banks shaped like handbags, shoes, animals and toasters (about $65 and up); Joseph Somers, whose ‘functional art” pieces include a chest of drawers that looks like stacked suitcases (about $4500); Debbi Tivens, who specializes in tole painted furniture ($225 to $5000); Ralph Garret/Shoestrings, who does exclusive, colorful, hand-painted furniture ($175 to $5000); and paintings by Ann Krasner ($300 to $5000).

“Most everything has a function,” Maremont explains as she strides through the small but well stocked store. “That’s my preference.  Because people will walk in and say, “I need a wonderful little table for the side of the bed, ‘and they want a little color, and maybe this will be their one handmade piece.”

This former interior designer (she still does a scant few jobs a year) admits she’s “always been into crafts” and sees the rest of the country now sharing her passion.

Maremont even designed a line of pieced suede slipcovers a few years ago, but felt she has another calling.

“I always has a dream,” she says, “that one day I’d have a gallery-type store. So what I did was combine interior design with crafts.” She finds that customers often have an emotional response to certain pieces, fixating on them instantly.

She combs craft shows to find artists, while others simply wander into her store with their work.  Maremont “goes on gut” when deciding which artists to carry.

“There’s an energy in here. The artists-their lives are in here.”