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Twentieth-century
design gets a
21st-century
makeover in this
Birmingham home.

Lynne Konstantin I Design Writer
Beth Singer I Photographer

he owners of this Birmingham home were fed up.
Purchasing it two days before their wedding, the Jewish
couple — a health-care administrator and an attorney —
tried their hand at decorating the house, which was built in 2009.
"We loved that the house was a blank slate, which allowed us
to be creative," says the wife. They also loved being in downtown
Birmingham.
But the day they called designer Jeffrey King, the husband told
him, "I carried my last piece of mismatched, misfit furniture to the
basement — then called you:'
And King, owner of Birmingham's Jeffrey King Interiors, was up
to the challenge of bringing it all together. "The house had a lot of
smaller rooms, because in downtown Birmingham, the only place to
go is up:' he says.
The couple, who now have an almost-2-year-old daughter and
two Boston Terriers, are fans of mid-century modern design, which
draws inspiration from architects Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier
and Mies van der Rohe.
"It's their passion, and the design is fantastic," says King. "So I tried
to blend the clean lines that they love with more transitional, family-
friendly and comfortable elements while making the most of the
smaller-scale spaces:'
"Jeffrey did an amazing job of making even the smallest rooms feel
larger:' says the wife. "He incorporated things we wanted to include,
like a piano and mid-century pieces, but he also made it warm and
cozy — and practical:'

During a visit to the Art Institute
of Chicago, the homeowners picked
up a postcard reproduction
of Gerhard Richter's 1965
oil-on-canvas Woman

Descending the Staircase.

King gave the postcard to Ady
Peleg, creative director at
Danielle Peleg Gallery in West
Bloomfield, who transformed
it into a stunning, larger-than-
life print. "This is a great
example of how over-scaling
certain pieces in a room can
actually make the room feel
larger," says King, who uses
the same technique with a
rectangular mirror over the
sofa. When the room was
finished, says King, "the wall
was still calling out for a little
piece of jewelry," so he added
the photograph of a bridge, petite in
comparison. "It's all about balance
and symmetry, or not balance
to create symmetry," says King.
Below it sits Knoll's iconic chrome-
and-leather Barcelona chair.

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Do you have a home you'd like to share with the community? Contact Lynne Konstantin at lkonstantin@thejewishnews.com .

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January 9 • 2014

