Inside a Collected 1925 Craftsman Home in Laurel Canyon

A Laurel Canyon home built around two opposing instincts

Interior designer Harrison Soll wasn’t looking for a relationship when he met Rodney Burns, the stylist and owner of West Hollywood vintage shop

Church. They met in the fall and were together by New Year’s. “I didn’t think it was going to be a relationship,” Soll says. What drew them together, he adds, was a shared eye for design: “We always found a throughline with design.” Burns’s shop occupies a historic 1920s West Hollywood home, and his work as a stylist and creative collaborator with Lenny Kravitz has spanned 15 years. Their shared interest now has a home of its own: a 1,400-square-foot Craftsman built in 1925 in Laurel Canyon. Soll led the decorating, weaving his spare modernism into Burns’s deep collection of vintage art, furniture, and sculpture. Kravitz sees the result as a convincing blend of Burns’s early and midcentury references and “ethnic expression” with Soll’s bold minimalism. That balance is more significant than it looks. The house has to hold a collection and two distinct tastes, while still feeling like a place to live.

The design negotiations show up in the details. Burns fought to keep a large Sergio Bustamante giraffe sculpture in the foyer; Soll points out that the front door swings perilously close to it. The foyer’s masks and paintings prompted another debate: Burns considered storing the masks or sending them to Church, while Soll wanted them displayed throughout the house. A piece of nail art above the fireplace has a happier origin. Burns regretted passing it up at a Santa Monica vintage shop, only to find it marked sold when he returned. Soll had secretly bought it as a Valentine’s Day gift.

Making room for maximalism

The living room makes the couple’s competing instincts visible. One sofa, designed by Joseph D’Urso for Knoll, wears leopard fabric; another is a leather De Sede Terrazza. A Stark Antilocarpa rug anchors the room, while fiberglass shell works sourced through Kelly Wearstler and a manipulated canvas garment bag by Roosevelt “Rip” Woods fill out the art. Woods was the first Black artist to have a solo exhibition at the Phoenix Art Museum.

Renting set some limits. Soll received permission to retile a bathroom and replace its vanity. He took a less formal route with the doe-patterned wall-to-wall carpet in the living room, asking forgiveness after installation; the landladies liked it. Burns needed more persuading. “The carpet took many dinners of conversations between the two of us,” Soll says. That back-and-forth is central to the house. Soll calls himself a minimalist; Burns describes himself as “a maximalist to the umpteenth power.” Some rooms give Soll’s restraint more room to breathe: an office pairs a midcentury desk with a 1970s tapestry, while a Sergio Bustamante dining table and Chinese Art Deco rug carry the dining room. Burns says Soll has helped him pause, loosen his attachment to some collected pieces, and show more restraint.

Burns treats decorating much like getting dressed: “Building an outfit, building a room: same thing in my opinion.” Kravitz praises his “limitless” visual vocabulary, which moves across eras and genres while honoring artists and influences both historic and new. In the Laurel Canyon house, that range meets Soll’s editing instinct—and the result seems to depend on both of them having a say.

Burns’s maximalism is especially legible in the living room: leopard Scalamandré upholstery, zebra hide chairs, and a curving De Sede sofa all compete for attention. Soll drew a line at covering the entire leopard sofa in the patterned fabric, adding leather instead. “I just think it would have been too maximalist to do a full Scalamandré sofa.” Brass sculptures, bronze figures found at an Arizona estate sale, and other sculptural works extend the collection around the room.

A home shaped by its quirks

The bedroom’s odd angles make the stainless steel bed from TTMM look dramatically askew. It’s actually aligned with the room’s geometry—a small example of how the home’s unconventional architecture steers the design. That geometry sits alongside a deliberate mix of influences. Soll describes the couple’s shared style as Afrocentric with a touch of Ralph Lauren. Burns puts it more simply: “Our visions have mingled.” They’ve taken their time combining their collections, including a 1970s textile artwork Burns found vintage. Soll remembers admiring it when he visited Burns’s apartment early in their relationship: “I used to go to Rodney’s apartment when we first started dating, and I would be like, ‘Oh my God! Like, if we break up, I’m never gonna be able to find this tapestry,’” he says. The personal details carry through the rest of the home. In the bedroom, a stainless steel bed sits with Paul Evans “Cityscape” nightstands, striped bedding and antique bronze lamps with African mud cloth shades. The office textile is another Burns find. In the bathroom, Soll got his landladies’ permission to install new tile and a vanity; the metal Curtis Jeré artwork came from Burns’s collection. Out back, a shed serves as Burns’s closet. There’s still one unresolved design decision: a basket for blankets. Soll says they haven’t found one they both like. That’s a fitting final note for a home assembled gradually, through shared taste and the occasional stalemate.