It's a long way, visually speaking, from the neoclassical architecture of St. Petersburg's grand
Hermitage Museum to the sensuous curves of
Pierre Paulin's famed foam and rubber "tongue" chair for Artifort, a Dutch furniture maker.
But the way
Tatiana Takaeva
sees it, the San Francisco Bay Area is the perfect place for a Russian
civil engineer with contemporary sensibilities to showcase some of the
world's leading lines of modern, streamlined chairs, couches and
home accessories.
Takaeva, a graduate of St. Petersburg's
University of Architecture and Construction,
recently opened one of San Francisco's newer showrooms for modern
European manufacturers. The store is Arttitud, on Potrero Avenue, and
Takaeva is the exclusive representative for Artifort, of Maastricht;
ClassiCon, of Munich; SixInch, of Belgium; Ceccotti, of Italy; Wogg, of
Switzerland; and others.
"I would never open a store like this in
South Dakota," Takaeva said. "San Francisco is a magnet for creative
people who appreciate art, even the corporate clients and the
high-tech companies."
Her timing may be right on target.
San Francisco and the Bay
Area have long been home to classical, traditional interior tastes,
despite many interior designers' attempts to nudge their clients toward
futuristic pieces in chrome, glass, foam and rubber. But the pendulum
has begun to swing, as evidenced by the growing crowds attending the
SF20/21 modern furniture show at Fort Mason, now in its fourth year; a
shift toward the construction of lofts and high-rise condominiums along
the Embarcadero whose model
apartments
are done in modern style, influencing the people who buy them; and the
rise of a handful of mid-century modern furniture dealers, such as
Monument in the Mission District, that expose consumers to wares that
previously were unavailable here but that are ubiquitous in New York and
Los Angeles.
Arttitud is styled like a modern art museum gallery,
with white walls and floors that offset select pieces of colorful
furniture in minimalist
fashion.
They
include Pierre Paulin's ribbon chair for Artifort, a classic created in
1966 and still in production; the Wiggleworm chaise longue by SixInch;
and the Twenty Two chair by Jaime Hayon for Ceccotti, made of 22 pieces
of maple stained dark brown, with upholstered seat and backrest. On the
walls hang pieces of abstract and figurative art by local painters
including Terbo Ted, Tobias Tovera and
Jerry Frost.
Takaeva
became interested in modern furniture while in school, when
representatives from Italy's Salone Internazionale del Mobile - the
International Furniture Fair of Milan - came to St. Petersburg to set up
offices to promote the show and Italian design, as well as recruit
interior designers and salespeople to work with Italian lines. During
the past 15 years, she has attended the expo and developed relationships
with various furniture lines, but more important, formed a love of
modern design's clean lines. It came in stark contrast to St. Peterburg,
which was founded by
Peter the Great on swampland, with buildings evoking Italian and French architecture and, later, Stalinist complexes.
"From
a very young age I was attracted to newness, quite separate from the
city's imposing structural statements of self," she said. "Partially in
reaction, I was attracted strongly to clean lines, efficient structures
and buildings made to look both thoroughly functional and weightless."
After
college, Takaeva lived briefly in London, then moved to Southern
California, drawn by an English-language program in La Jolla. There, she
married a lawyer and
real estate
developer. Together, they bought, redesigned and sold homes for a
living. After a divorce, Takaeva, who now had two children, moved to San
Francisco, where the couple had had a second home.
In addition
to residential clients, she is aiming for corporate customers,
particularly tech startups, green industries and children's hospitals.
"The
best thing about the lines I stock is that they have transformative
power," she said. "They are unique and so strong in their design
aesthetic and commitment to delivering forms and new materials that they
can deeply change the experience of space and can energize anything."
To match the entrepreneurial spirit of the region, she is using the
showroom space in multiple ways - to host after-hours parties, allow
filmmakers to shoot movie scenes and to act as a center for
architectural groups wishing to host small design charrettes.
It's an ambitious slate for someone relatively new to the city's
interior design scene, but look no further than the name of the store - a
combination of the words "art" and "attitude," to understand where
she's coming from.
"The world is illusion, so you get what you create," Takaeva said, paraphrasing her favorite self-help book author,
Richard Bach. "If you dream, dream big."
