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In Los Angeles, the noted designer/antique and art dealer Richard Shapiro has shaped a surreal secret garden with rare botanical species, sculpted box, and a trompe l’oeil Palladian villa for luxurious repose. I presented Richard’s Malibu beach house on THE STYLE SALONISTE and it’s one of my most all-time popular blog posts which you can see by clicking here. Here is Richard at home in a hidden corner of Holmby Hills. This garden has been his obsession for over two decades. I know you will love this highly original and ultra-private garden, and Richard’s fascinating private world. Come with me for a visit. Richard Shapiro, a world-renowned art collector, furniture designer, and antique dealer based in Los Angeles, is also, secretly, a superbly creative, accomplished and daring landscape designer. Richard has created for his pleasure an extraordinary private garden that surrounds his Hispano-Moorish residence on a quiet street in Holmby Hills. Hidden behind walls of Boston ivy and a forest of timber bamboo, it is an utterly silent and tranquil domain, his escape from the world. Shapiro’s garden is a dreamscape of sculptural clipped box. Meandering paths lead past a reflecting pool to hidden corners with dramatic steel sculptures. This verdant world—vivid green year-round—feels much larger than its half acre. Boundaries are blurred. Even his residence is entirely shrouded with overgrown vines and feels part of the garden. “I view my personal garden as a vast canvas and the creative possibilities are limited only by my imagination,” said Shapiro, who works on the landscape every day, pruning and planting. “Rather than a garden, I think of it as a vast installation of land art.” Overlooking the large pool and designed as the focal point of the garden, is a charming folly. This pool house was inspired by a Palladian villa, complete with a handsome antique stone fireplace, hand-carved columns, an antique mirror, and a large-scale lantern, all designed meticulously by Shapiro. It’s a chic stage set, and entirely convincing. But it’s Shapiro’s surreal boxwood garden, inspired by the abstract hilltop gardens surrounding the Chateau de Marqueyssac in southwest France that is his theatrical tour de force. “On an annual tour through the Dordogne ten years ago, I visited the fifteenth-century Chateau du Marqueyssac and marveled at its endlessly swirling and surreal boxwood sculptures,” recalled Shapiro. He had started designing his garden about 26 years ago, as a labor of love. In a kind of frenzy, he dug up the lawn, and planted the first hundred boxwood plants in the ground nine years ago. The 17th-century chateau garden, his inspiration, was originally planted by a pupil of André le-Notre, the designer of the Versailles gardens. Acres of box topiaries are clipped in abstract shapes. It can be visited today. “I returned home and began researching buxus sempervirens—known as box,’ said Shapiro. Some of his plants are acquired fully grown from a specialist nursery; others are just a few tender branches. “The box bushes, now numbering around 1,500, suggest to me the forms they might take,” said the designer. “The entire exercise is very fluid and spontaneous, with a great deal of accident, surprise, experimentation, and randomness.” He planted the box, and then hand carved them into a maze of undulating cloud-like forms. “I had visited the chateau for research and discovered this sculptural garden concept. The shapes are so mysterious and original. The clipped box was the basis for what became and remains my obsession. It is a work in progress, always being refined and altered somewhat from year to year.” Shapiro conceived the entire clipped box sculptures and does all the shaping and shearing by hand with Japanese shears and clippers. More are added every year and his skill at creating new effects grows each year. “It is very spontaneous and unplanned,” said Shapiro. The evergreen garden, tranquil and shaded, doesn’t change from season to season. A burst of light green new growth and the beauty of wisteria and jacaranda blossoms herald the spring. There are juniper trees to create a curtain of green background. Boston ivy covers most of the walls of the studio, where the designer crafts new collections and meets clients. Shapiro planted Eugenia to secure the tall property line hedges. An impenetrable perimeter of trees, hedges and foliage entirely obscures the house and garden from the exterior. He uses a variety of hand shears and arcane tools. Heavy-duty American versions go into action for rough work, and lately he has been using very sharp Japanese clippers. “With these shears, the sculptural possibilities are endless, very precise, and rapid. Gratification is instant,” said Shapiro. Over the next few years, Shapiro obsessively covered every square foot of a former lawn with this material, creating vast and wavy vistas in every direction, like a flock of green sheep roaming his land, when viewed from the residence. He also planted exceptional specimen trees and shrubs, including Italian Cypress, Ficus Nitida, King and Queen palms, and fragrant Pittosporum, Schefflera actinophylla, Podocarpus Henkelii, with its elegant slender leaves, as well as Jacaranda, Norfolk Pine and Raphis Palm, a dramatic fan palm. Shapiro’s petite pool house (it is just ten feet deep) is a copy of the portico at Palladio’s Villa Chiericati in Vicenza. He discovered the 16th century architect’s original construction drawings of the structure in a book from his private library. Shapiro executed the plans in weather-resistant redwood and then eroded and patinated the surfaces with plaster, lime and varied pigments to simulate ancient stone and to give the portico and the entire scene an authentic antique appearance. Shapiro executed the plans in weather-resistant redwood and then eroded and patinated the surfaces with plaster, lime and varied pigments to simulate ancient stone to give the portico and the entire scene an authentic antique appearance. It’s furnished with weather-faded furnishings, to appear old and worn and well used. It’s the perfect hide-away for festive apéritifs in the evening, as a setting for a quiet summer lunch, or even for an early supper on a winter evening with the fire blazing and darkness settling over the trees. But it’s the sculpted box that has become Shapiro’s obsession. “Having been steeped in post-war conceptual art for over thirty-five years, and as a working sculptor, I sensed that something other than mere landscaping was taking place,” he said. “It was at this juncture that I began to realize that for me, this entire exercise had very little to do with gardens. Somewhere along the way, I had forgotten that I was installing plants. Instead, I was in a dream state creating art populated not only by individual sculptural forms, but rather a fully integrated whole, with buxus as the medium.” Shapiro said that his lifelong immersion in the world of art had taught him to see everything as art, or at least as the fodder for art. It’s silent here in his verdant domain. He can work for hours, his artistic instincts and imagination taking over. For him, it’s sculpture, creation, expression. “My garden, it is now obvious, is my art project, endlessly captivating and inspiring, ” he said. The primary objective—that of total creativity and isolation—has been achieved. Contemporary and antique sculptures are a dramatic counterpoint to the green garden panorama. A welded steel sculpture by Sir Anthony Caro has developed a rusted finish. Richard Shapiro designed the dramatic monumental steel sculpture, “The Red Forest”. Seven 18’ tall steel columns, painted red, emerge from the earth at random angles. Richard Shapiro’s Studiolo line of furniture is sold in eight showrooms around the country, www.richardshapirostudiolo.com. Or by appointment at his Holmby Hills studio: 310-275-6700. New Collections I asked Richard about his newest Studiolo designs DDS: Next collections in the works? RS: I am now working on a collection of teak furniture, which will be very minimal and sculptural and suitable for both interior and exterior. Additionally I am always sketching designs for various pieces of furniture, almost always with a contemporary take on a classic design. Yes, Studiolo. All the new pieces are for Studiolo and will be released when ready...maybe 6 months. Sculptor Ulrich Ruckriem created a massive sculpture of two quarried stone monoliths, each weighing six tons. Throughout the garden are classic sculptures, including ancient torsos, Roman and French column fragments, capitals, Romanesque lions, 16th-century Florentine lions, an 18th century stone bust, and stone urns. Plantings The vast preponderance of the plant material is the boxwood, but Shapiro has also planted: Boxwood (European). Buxus Sempervirens Japanese Timber Bamboo Black Bamboo Italian Cypress Ficus Nitida King and Queen palms Coral Pittosporum Schefflera Podocarpus Henkelii Jacaranda Norfolk Pine Raphis Palm Juniper trees Boston ivy on most of the walls of the house and garden Eugenia for the tall property line hedges THE STUDIOLO COLLECTION IS AVAILABLE AT THE FOLLOWING TO-THE-TRADE SHOWROOMS: David Sutherland, Dallas David Sutherland, Florida David Sutherland, Houston Travis and Company, Atlanta Shears and Window, San Francisco Jean de Merry, Chicago Studium, NY Holland and Sherry, Chicago Administrative and Sales office, Los Angeles PHOTOGRAPHY: All photography by the great Lisa Romerein, www.lisaromerein.com. Lisa Romerein is the superb photographer for memorable images in my most recent book, ANN GETTY INTERIOR STYLE (Rizzoli, 2012). Her work is also featured in recent issues of House Beautiful. All photography by Lisa Romerein used here with express permission. All of her images are copyright Lisa Romerein and may not be used without written permission of the copyright holder.
