LOS ANGELES – Decorator Nathan Turner has brought his interior design expertise, home décor finds and his personally designed textiles under one roof in a new showroom in West Hollywood that opened in May.
The 2,200 square-foot shop is filled with antiques and vintage finds, photography by Victoria Pearson, and art by Carley Beck, whose charming paintings range from animal portraits to California pop culture.
Nearly all the fabric and wallpaper that Turner, a California native, designed — like the California toile that depicts cowboys, mountain lions and rattlesnakes — serves as an ode to California culture or the cattle ranch on which he grew up.
“It really is my California world, fully realized,” he said.
Turner got his start in home furnishings straight out of college as an assistant to an antiques dealer (his ability to speak Italian got him the job, he said.) He traveled the antiques circuit throughout Europe, meeting interesting people and having the time of his life. “I couldn’t believe this was my job,” he said. A few years later, he opened his own antiques shop in an old house in L.A., creating an inviting, homey space that felt collected and layered. It’s also where he hosted lunches — cooking is another passion. The shop garnered Turner a lot of attention. “People would come into the store and say, ‘I love your vibe. Can you do my house?’” It was the beginning of his decorating career.
His rapidly growing design business and other creative pursuits — Tuner has written a cookbook, is a special projects editor at Architectural Digest, and has a new design book coming out next spring — forced him to close the antiques store in 2016. But last year, after launching his fabric collection and getting into showrooms in New York and around the world, an industry friend suggested he open his own showroom.
“Literally the next day I started looking. A few months later, I had a shop again.”
Being a store owner this time around feels different, Turner said, because he is selling products that he designed and sharing a point of view that he did not express before.
Turner is also happy to include the creative work of friends in his assortment and share his love of cooking with visitors. “I love to host, so I’ll be back doing that at all levels in the shop,” he said.
