A Morning in Summerland: Where We Source the Unexpected

Every other Thursday morning, before the studio opens, we drive south on the 101 for exactly seven minutes and pull off at Summerland. The exit deposits you into what feels like a different century — a three-block beach town where the loudest sound is the surf and the most urgent appointment is coffee at the corner shop.

We are here for the Summerland Antique Collective, a rambling building on Lillingston Avenue that houses thirty-plus dealers under one roof. This is not a curated boutique with price tags that require a deep breath. This is a hunt. And for us, it is one of the most important parts of how we design.

What We Look For

We are not looking for museum pieces. We are looking for objects with character — things that carry the evidence of a life lived. A Swedish farmhouse table with a hundred years of knife marks. A pair of French iron garden chairs with paint wearing thin in exactly the places where hands have rested. A ceramic bowl from someone's studio, slightly asymmetric, with a glaze that no factory could replicate.

These objects do something no trade showroom can: they break the spell of perfection. When everything in a room is new, the room feels like a set. When one piece carries the patina of actual time, the entire room relaxes. It gives the homeowner permission to live.

The perfect imperfect piece is not the opposite of luxury. It is the highest expression of it — proof that you chose this object for its soul, not its pedigree.

Beyond the Collective

Summerland has more than the Collective. Country House Antiques specializes in 18th and 19th-century Swedish and French furniture — pieces with the bone structure to anchor an entire room. The Well, slightly up the hill, curates a rotating selection of pottery, art, and small furnishings that walks the line between rustic and refined. And Field + Fort offers a mix of antique and bespoke pieces for both home and garden.

We also visit the Santa Barbara Lights showroom for antique exterior fixtures — a single vintage lantern above a front door can set the tone for an entire home. And when a project calls for something specific that Summerland cannot provide, we extend the search to JF Chen and Blackman Cruz in Los Angeles, or, for the most significant pieces, to the auction houses and European buying trips.

Why the Hunt Matters

We could order everything from trade showrooms. It would be faster, more predictable, and easier to specify in a procurement schedule. But it would produce a home that feels like every other well-designed home. What makes our projects distinctive is not our taste in new furniture — it is our willingness to spend a Thursday morning in Summerland, turning over chairs and holding pottery up to the window, looking for the one thing that no one else's home will have.

That is what our clients are really buying when they hire us: not a style, but a sensibility. And that sensibility is built, in no small part, seven minutes south of our studio, in a quiet beach town where the antique dealers know us by name.