Steven Miller's art objects speak volumes
Objects of Affection NWBLK's Steven Miller, with partner and pets, fills their home with pieces - old and new - that say a lot about him
Interior designer Steven Miller's home is filled with gorgeous objects, pleasing mid-century-inspired furniture, and several whimsical collections of dolls and outsider art, such as reworked Pez dispensers.
Dash and Vera are introduced; they're the beloved pets of Miller, 47, and his partner of nearly 22 years, Scott Owens, the executive assistant to the chief executive at the San Francisco Foundation.
Miller, who works mainly in residential design and also hospitality - as with the Joie de Vivre hotel group - has a design aesthetic that he refers to more than once as involving "conversation."
Without counterpoint, there is no conversation between the contemporary and the classic," he explains, noting that a strict mid-century modern interior often falls "flat.
[...] branching into retail and even events, Miller recently launched the NWBLK (pronounced "the new black"), a retail workshop and gallery housed in a former can-manufacturing facility that is walking distance from his home.
The 12,500-square-foot space also hosts his design studio, with a team of four employees, and provides offices for an architect, a real estate developer and a modeling agency.
The downstairs showroom artfully displays an eclectic array of "small batch" furniture, clothing and other well-crafted locally made goods, while the neighboring parking is home to Mission Dispatch, a rotating array of lunchtime food trucks.
Throughout high school, he honed his skills with both paid and unpaid design consulting, including work as a window dresser.
After moving to California for college at California College of the Arts, from which he graduated in 1992, he worked for other local designers, including notable Gary Hutton.
"The Bay Area has been uncharacteristically provincial about design for a long time, but now a whole new group of thinkers and innovators is leading the way to a new style and way of doing things," he says.
Why it holds pride of place in the dining room: "It's an amazing, fantastic architectural drawing by a former city of Oakland architect."
After the sassy waitress brought it - full of limoncello - she pretended she didn't know what I was laughing about, but then she asked me if I might prefer the male version.