Decorator John Saladino Lists Montecito Villa

SELLER: John Saladino
LOCATION: Santa Barbara, CA
PRICE: $24,500,000
SIZE: 10,500+ square feet, 6 bedrooms, 6 full and 2 half bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Listen chickens, Your Mama has a lot of things crowding our plate today but instead of leaving y'all high and dry we thought we'd show you a little pretty located in the über upscale enclave of Montecito, CA.

All to frequently Your Mama finds ourself staring with flabbergast and shame at some over-wrought mcmansion that listing information generously and audaciously proclaims to be Tuscan or otherwise Mediterranean in its architectural style. As often as not these faux-Tuscan bad dreams are sitting cheek by jowl with massive mock-Mediterraneans in some suburban guard gated community with a stoopid name like Whispering Oaks. Seldom and sadly do we come across a property that purports itself to be authentically Italian in design that could very well be found in the countryside of the boot shaped nation. However, the done done duh-uhne 13-acre Montecito estate owned by the much lauded and applauded veteran interior designer John Saladino that recently arrived on the market with a butt clenching asking price of $24,500,000 manages a genuine Italian truthfulness seldom seen outside of Italy and, let's be honest butter beans, only available to those with the loot to finance such an exercise in architectural integrity.

Mister Saladino's work may not be to your taste–and it is not even remotely how Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter would choose to do up a house–but he's known around the world by the sorts of filthy rich folks who can afford his services for masterfully mixing modern bits and pieces with traditional styles and architectural antiquities that altogether create a pastiche of decorative perfection. The completed rooms and projects of the mid-west bred designer sally forth with a dignified–if sometimes haughty–self possession, are painstakingly and expensively balanced, and remarkably poised with a pitch perfect sense of what is both architecturally and decoratively correct.

Once upon a time, in another lifetime when Your Mama owned an itty-bitty showroom in New York City, Your Mama sold Mister Saladino–or more accurately a representative of Mister Saladino–several custom made chandeliers that were to be installed in the home gym of some potentate in Saudi Arabia, Dubai or one of them other Middle Eastern countries where money is often no object. Needless to say we have a bit of a soft spot in our cold and dark heart for Mister Saladino who helped to keep our lights on for another month or two in those post-9-11 years that were pretty rough for a lot of small downtown biznesses such as our little endeavor.

Anyhoo, property records indicate that the very accomplished New York City-based Mister Saladino scooped up his West Coast getaway in July of 2001. It's not clear to Your Mama what the decorating demon paid for the property but we'd bet our long bodied bitches Linda and Beverly that the purchase price and renovation costs don't even come close to the sky-high asking price which reflects not only the quality of Mister Saladino's full-scale renovation and restoration of the 1929 stone Italianate mansion, but also the explosion in property prices that occurred in the early 2000s in that exceedingly expensive neck of the California coast.

The house, which Mister Saladino drolly dubbed Villa di Lemma, is accessed by way of a gated .2 mile long drive that winds up the hillside through a park like forest of eucalyptus, cypress, and mahogany trees. One arrives dramatically at a massive motor court that's paved with antique stones and dotted with antique Venetian statuary.

The ocean view villa measures somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 square feet and in addition to its 9 fireplaces includes 6 bedrooms and 6 full and 2 half poopers, a count we're pretty sure but not positive includes the guest apartment or staff quarters that has its own separate entrance.

A doorway in the ivy covered stone front facade, flanked by tall cypress trees and a pair of gas sconces, gives passage to a covered loggia with exposed beam ceiling and rustic stone floor that leads to the entrance hall that gives way to the 40-foot long drawing room with large fireplace, original 2" thick terra cotta tile floor, and sophisticated day-core. The nearby formal dining room that has large casement windows on two sides, another fireplace, and a mix of stone and paneled walls that might be some sort of pecky cypress or pickled something or other. A hidden door in the dining room leads into the adjacent kitchen.

Most folks would not dream of putting a super sleek sybarite's dream kitchen into such a period piece as Villa di Lemma, but Mister Saladino fearlessly dares to go there with slab marble counter tops, stainless steel cabinetry, and custom built refrigerators all of which are without question happily married to Old World architectural details such as rough stone walls and a series of chunky hand hewn beams that march down the wood ceiling.

The least formal room in the house, where Your Mama hopes Mister Saladino and his family can kick their feet up on the furniture and watch the boob-toob, is the stone walled and sky-lit media room that has a curving fireplace tucked into the corner, built in book shelves with scrolled broken pediments, wet bar, large flat screen tee-vee, garden access and views, and lots of cozy looking down-filled upholstered pieces. Your Mama would like the children to note the gigantic antique rug on the floor of the media/family room woven of the most beautiful and subtle beiges, burnt oranges, and ochres. We can't imagine how we'd incorporate that run into the day-core of our little cottage in the hills, but we'd run over a nun to have something that exquisite to lay down on the floor.

There are, according to listing information, three bedrooms with private poopers on the upper level and another guest suite on the lower level with private entrance, access to a garden terrace, and private facilities that feature an antique Roman soaking tub. Mister Saladino's master suite, also on the lower level, opens to an ocean view gravel garden and includes leather detailed bathroom and dressing areas.

Mister Saladino's talents don't end with choosing the right wood for paneling or the correct side table for the foyer. He's also a skilled landscaper whose handiwork can be seen in every nook and cranny of his Santa Barbara estate. There are extensive gardens, terraces, courtyards that offer both panoramic and thoughtfully framed ocean, harbor, mountain, and city views. In addition to flat lawn terraces including one where Mister Saladino has installed a single classical Roman column, there is an agave garden, olive allee, and ocean view swimming pool. Just below what marketing materials call the Oriental carpeted terrace an outdoor dining terrace is shaded by craggy olive trees on one side and hemmed in by a long stone balustrade on the other. It's really here where Your Mama can see and best understand the appeal and skill of Mister Saladino who has recognized that this stunning locale requires little in terms of day-core than an extra long family style farmhouse table and 10 or 12 weather worn wicker chairs that look like they were stolen out of a café on the Via Veneto.

The new owner of Mister Saladino's Villa di Lemma will have some big shit neighbors to invite over for a backyard barbecue including Al or Tipper Gore who recently scooped up a $8,875,000 Montecito mansion, Oprah Winfrey, tool tycoon Eric Schmidt who reportedly bought Ellen Degeneres and Portia diRossi's old place in late 2007 for around $20,000,000, super producer Ivan Reitman (National Lampoon's Animal House, Ghostbusters, Kindergarten Cop, and Ghostbusters II), the disgraced and former Countrywide Financial CEO Angelo Mozilo, funny lady Carol Burnett, and Beanie Baby billionaire Ty Warner who has a massive bluff top spread just on the other side of the Santa Barbara Cemetery from Bellosguardo, the sprawling estate of the recently hospitalized, mysterious, and reclusive centenarian heiress Huguette Clark who is said to not have occupied in the meticulously maintained house in 40 years or more.

In 2009 Mister Saladino published a coffee table tome called Villa that documented his long slog through the renovation and decorating process of Villa di Lemma which listing information says Mister Saladino called "the summation of all my knowledge; it's my opus." For twenty four and some million clams it better be a damn opus, right?

listing photos: Prudential California Realty

Geoffrey Bradfield's Jewel Box

BUYERS: Geoffrey Bradfield
LOCATION: New York, NY
PRICE: $1,100,000
SIZE: 1 bedroom, 1.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: While cobblers often need a new pair of shoes, nice, gay decorators rarely do. As a breed they are deeply and highly sensitive to their surroundings and would rather saw off a limb than reside in rooms that do not reflect their personal vision. A not yet successful decorator may live in a dump, but hunnies, it's a dump decorated and done over to within an inch of its life.

The homes of decorators and designers are not only laboratories for testing their decorative ideas in the most thorough and pure manner, but they are also calling cards. One decorating eminence well known to work over his personal spaces as a direct reflection of his decorating psyche is the wildly successful and much acclaimed Geoffrey Bradfield who recently placed a done, done, done 1 bedroom and 1.5 pooper Park Avenue pied a terre on the market with an asking price of $1,100,000.

The upright but sassy Mister Bradfield, who typically plies his talents for international high society types with nothing so boring or bothersome as a budget to get in the way of a well decorated home, is a clever chap who was once asked what it would take for a home to look like a million bucks. His pithy response was, "To spend two million bucks," which may not be funny to everyone but ought to provide a wee window into the uppity world in which Mister Bradfield floats.

Mister Bradfield, who scoots around town in a $200,000 Bentley Continental Flying Spur with a driver named Carlos, is well known among the hoitiest of the toitiest for creating sumptuous, opulent, somewhat outre, and–natch–remarkably expensive rooms. A Geoffrey Bradfield designed space will typically be done with a severely restricted background palette–often white or the most soo-blime shade of grey–and punched up with piquant and forceful pops of vibrant color. He achieves his vision of elegance and restrained glamour by fearlessly concocting a carefully balanced but rule breaking decorative marinade of various styles and eras. He takes high-minded often abstract contemporary art and a dizzying number of mirrored walls that he bravely mixes, matches and mismatches with a Baroque this, a Neopolitan that, a Louis the something or other here and a Gustavian gewgaw over there. The idea behind Mister Bradfield's stew like day-core, as far as Your Mama can tell, is that good design is good design no matter what century it hails from and well designed things, regardless of when they were designed, fit together like a top and a bottom. Mister Bradfield's creations drip with an urbane sophistication that might seem fussy to the point of precious by some, but for a certain segment of the high faluttin' folks who own homes in posh places like Palm Beach, St. Moritz, and the Sherry damn Netherland Hotel in New York City, he's a freakin' genius.

Property records show that Mister Bradfield has owned a number of properties in New York City–more on that later–and that he picked up his 8th floor pied a terre at The Beekman in April of 2006 for $585,000. Since Mister Bradfield has owned an E. 61st Street townhouse since May of 2004, it's unclear for what purpose(s) he purchased or maintained this Park Avenue apartment. The Beekman was built in 1927 in the Italian Renaissance style and offers white glove services to residents that include 24/7 doorman and concierge, and hotel style amenities such as valet, 5-day per week maid service and fitness center. Those services, plus the private storage room, account for the the unusually high $2,530 per month maintenance charge.

The 3-room apartment–4 if you count the picayune kitchen–has a standard and unexciting layout with a front door that opens into an entrance gallery that Mister Bradfield transformed into an intime jewel box of a dining room with a wall of paneled mirrored doors that extend up to the ceiling and attempt to give the low ceilings a more dramatic sense of scale. The square dining table has a crisp white tablecloth surrounded a quartet of painted Rococo style chairs with intensely detailed carved backs. A large, monochromatic abstract painting takes up most of the wall opposite the mirrored doors and pushed up into the corner of the room near the mirrored doors that open into the hallway leading to the bedroom a stone carving of a man's torso wrapped toga-like in an elaborately draped fabric sits atop a pedestal that due to it's design allows the torso to be lit from underneath. Listen chickens, Your Mama certainly understands the importance of antiquities and the decorative benefits to bringing some genuine patina into a well dressed room but we always find these kind of male (semi) nude things to be a bit silly and–dare we say with all due respect to Mister Bradfield–desperate when placed in the private quarters of a middle aged man.

Behind the entrance gallery/dining room is a typically teeny-tiny and windowless New York City kitchen that's barely more then 5 feet wide but includes what listing information calls "top gourmet appliances" and " floor to ceiling bookcases." While Mister Bradfield like to entertain, he hardly seems like the type to get sweaty in the kitchen so Your Mama imagines the wee kitchen is nothing more than a expensive room to store the champagne magnums and fois gras until the hired help comes over to pour and dish it all out.

Several of the walls of the shoebox shaped living room are fitted with Mister Bradfield's signature giant mirrored panels comprised of smaller frameless mirrors set end to end. The room's all important contemporary art component consists primarily of a somewhat disturbing and gigantic portrait of an unknown redhead with a bad hair do. Quilted curtain panels with exquisitely hidden hardware puddle generously on the ground, and a couple of clean lined slipper chairs are swaddled in the same delicate lavender colored fabric as the Louis the XVI (or something) settee with silver leafed wooden accents and a gently undulating back.

In front of the dainty but elegant settee a thick, masculine slab of glass balances beautifully on a tangle of twigs cast from some sort of metal and finished with a silver material, possibly nickel or silver plating. Whatever those twigs are covered in we'd bet our long bodied bitches that that coffee table cost more than the Dr. Cooter's big white BMW. The children will note that one of the many ways Mister Bradfield achieves balance in this room is with lighting sconces affixed to the center of the wall mirrors that stylistically reflect the the twiggy tangle of the coffee table legs.

Although storage space is often at a minimum in New York City apartments, Mister Bradfield managed to squeeze in a total of 11 closets into the 1-bedroom apartment that by our rudimentary and unscientific calculations measures somewhere between 700 and 800 square feet. Seven of the closets are located in the lone bedroom where Mister Bradford smartly lined one entire wall with mirror-fronted closets.

The mirrored closets reflect the massive mirror on the opposite wall that reaches up to the ceiling and acts as the backboard for the bed. The mirrors reflecting the mirrors reflecting the mirrors reflecting the mirrors ad infinitum would be enough to make Your Mama need a damn nerve pill. Plus and quite frankly, chickens, we do not want or need to see every contour and bulge of our body reflected an infinite number of times at the very moment in the morning that we wake up and step out of bed all bleary and boozy eyed. Anyhoo, the portions of the walls not slathered in mirrors are covered in a canvas that depicts a dozen or more gentlemen in pre-revolutionary garb who may (or may not) be the founding fathers or just some pre-Revolutionary chicken for Mister Bradfield and/or his guests to check out while drifting off to slumber.

Mister Bradfield maintains homes in both New York and Palm Beach, natch. His former real estate holdings include a 5th floor apartment at 610 Park Avenue that records show he purchased in October of 1998 and sold in November of 2003 for $1,200,000. That same month he picked up a 1 bedroom and 2 pooper Palm Beach condo for $375,000 and a month later sold a Palm Beach home for $1,800,000. In December of 2005, Mister Bradfield sold a small apartment in the same E. 62nd street townhouse building where Joan Rivers lives in a doo-plex penthouse pad she recently had on the market for $25,000,000.

In May of 2004, property records show that Mister Bradfield paid $4,150,000 for an East 61st Street townhouse built in 1869 by the same Irish bloke who built the entire block. Sometime in 2009 Mister Bradfield took the peeps at LXTV on a fascinating video tour of the townhouse that includes a white, Lucite, and mirrored reception room with a few hot pink bits and pieces, a library done mostly in a most gorgeous gray with electric bursts Yves Klein blue, and a mostly black and white top floor office suite wrapped in black and white wallpaper depicting hand sketched clusters of New York City buildings.