Contained in the Los Angeles House of Giampiero Tagliaferri, Former Artistic Director of Oliver Peoples

The Los Angeles home of interior designer Giampiero Tagliaferri is an object lesson in the wonders of 20th-century Italian furniture and the affinities between Italian modernism and the midcentury-modern movement incubated in Southern California. Chockablock with treasures both familiar and obscure, the decor encompasses work by luminaries on the order of Gae Aulenti, Vico Magistretti, Joe Colombo, Osvaldo Borsani, Angelo Mangiarotti, Mario Bellini, and Ettore Sottsass, along with furnishings by important but lesser-known talents such as Cesare Leonardi, Franca Stagi, Gianni Celada, and Gianni Moscatelli.

Tagliaferri is something of an Italian treasure himself. Born in Bergamo, the dapper, 38-year-old talent spent years in Milan working on marketing strategy and design for the fashionable eyewear brand Oliver Peoples. Six years ago, after being named creative director of the company, he relocated to L.A., where he oversaw the design of more than a dozen Oliver Peoples boutiques in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. “In college I studied business and industrial design, so I learned to approach business from a design perspective and vice versa. The Rome boutique was my first interiors project. It made me realize that interior design is where my true passions lie,” Tagliaferri says.

Although he continues to consult with Oliver Peoples, Tagliaferri recently left his position there to concentrate full-time on his newly minted interior design business, tackling residential and commercial assignments in the U.S. and abroad. Even more than the stores he’s created, Tagliaferri’s seductive home in L.A.’s Silver Lake neighborhood serves as the most compelling card for the designer’s urbane sensibility and incisive eye. Built in 1939 by architect E. Richard Lind, a protégé and colleague of the great Rudolph Schindler, the house synthesizes elements of early California modernism with more exotic, decorative inspirations garnered from far-flung locales. “From the outside, the house has a strong Japanese vibe, like a ryokan. The glazing of the entryway almost feels like a shoji screen. But when you focus on the details, you see the unmistakable influence of Schindler and his contemporaries,” Tagliaferri explains.

Although the structure and layout of the original home remain largely intact, the designer completely transformed the character and complexion of the interiors with a worldly mélange of art, objects, and furnishings. In addition to the aforementioned maestros of Italian design, Tagliaferri’s ensembles incorporate contemporary pieces—including planters and vessels by Adam Sirak, Jonathan Cross, Eric Roinestad, and Olivia Cognet—as well as an idiosyncratic art collection that spans Lucio Fontana and Sonia Delaunay to John Baldessari and Herb Ritts. A Senufo African bird sculpture represents a tip of the hat to Yves Saint Laurent–style savoir-faire, while swaths of emerald green and royal blue on the walls of the kitchen and office, respectively, goose the subdued, organic palette of the home’s original California redwood paneling with splashes of 1960s Italian Pop. Quintessentially American midcentury furnishings by George Nelson, Eero Saarinen, and Walter Lamb, along with Brazilian modernist pieces by Oscar Niemeyer and Ricardo Fasanello, expand the design lexicon beyond Europe.

“I’m interested in the cross-currents of modernism that connect the work that evolved in Europe, South America, and the U.S. This house gave me the opportunity to explore the kinship and tension among these disparate places and eras, and the ways in which the light and landscape of Los Angeles create a specific context and sense of place,” Tagliaferri says. The end result of those explorations is a home that celebrates the energy and spirit of California while paying homage to the extraordinary legacy of the designer’s home country and sympathetic design movements around the globe. Welcome to the world of Giampiero Tagliaferri.