The Secret to Mixing Pattern, Colour, Old and New

FORMAL BUT but whimsical, the dining room in Chris Barnes and Maisha Closson’s home in Los Angeles’s West Adams neighbourhood bursts with wildly disparate design references. How did local designer Dee Murphy, founder of Murphy Deesign, convince a wavy-fronted mahogany buffet to coexist with chairs as rigidly linear as Pierre Jeanneret’s 1950s designs; a live-edge dining table with an antique Turkish oushak rug? Shouldn’t the mix be as jarring as it sounds? Expert layering, said Ms. Murphy, comes of pairing hues, materials and shapes, not periods. “Anything that has history and has stood the test of time, those pieces you can always use no matter what,” she said.

The aesthetic glue that unifies the dining room’s seemingly random components begins with the choice of William Morris’s Strawberry Thief wallpaper. The Arts and Crafts pattern, from 1883, features rhythmic flourishes of flora and fauna in enthusiastic colours. Its rich blues and luscious pops of berry red led Ms. Murphy to choose pieces with companionable hues and forms. “When I look at this room, what’s really tying it in and calming it down is the paint, wallpaper, window treatments and rug. Those were the base pieces, the starting off points.”

Here, the other decisions that helped this obstreperous collection of elements cohere.

Botanical Engineering

Ms. Murphy admits she would normally set the finely detailed Indian chests against a less hectic, larger-scale wallpaper pattern. “But there was something about these chests and the black-and-white nature that felt neutral enough with a paper that’s just as busy,” she said. The camel-bone inlay, which depicts flat-petaled blossoms and spirals of climbing plants, also helps the little dressers jibe with the wall covering. Just as you can use a consistent palette to make a motley assortment of elements feel familial, she said, “you can use consistent themes to tie pieces in.” Scalloped-edge sconces from Nickey Kehoe allude to the red berries in the print, and the painting’s lyrical arches and colour palette similarly reinforce the motifs of the paper.

Dissonance and Harmony

The brass base of the walnut-wood dining table has been fashioned into a butterfly, or wishbone, shape. “It’s about a contrast, right? And a tension,” explained the designer. “The table slab has a more masculine feel because it’s big, it’s heavy, it’s wood. Then, you have the curves of the legs supporting it, and that’s more feminine.” An industrial or hefty base would have been much more predictable and created a cluster of angled legs. The modernist chairs and boho mirrors, meanwhile, respectively masculine and feminine, resolve their tension via matching organic materials: cane and wicker. “It’s very subtle, but it’s something that a discerning eye can pick out,” said Ms. Murphy. “There’s a reason why it feels fluid.”

Curve Balls and Line Drives

Interior designer Dee Murphy carefully weighed the formal qualities of the furnishings she included in the dining room of this home in the West Adams neighbourhood of Los Angeles. “Most rooms are square or rectangular, so you want to offset that and put some beautiful, curvy movement into the room,” she said. The undulating wallpaper pattern, the bow-front Federal-style sideboard, the looping wicker mirror frames, all contribute roundness. At the same time, angles and lines are needed to create dissonance. The sharply edged chairs were an inspired addition to the heart of the dining room, as was the slender, horizontal contemporary chandelier. Of her decision to hang a series of three petite mirrors from France she explained that repeating a single object allows you to make a statement but stops short of being garish. “If I had tried to add in a vintage, French, gilt gold mirror, that would have taken that moment a little too over the top.”

There are Corvette fans for whom the base US$68,300 car is plenty powerful enough. After all, it produces 495 horsepower and can reach 60 miles per hour in 2.9 seconds. But hold on, there’s also the approximately US$115,000 Z06—with 670 horsepower and able to reach 60 in 2.6 seconds. These split seconds are important for busy people—and for marketing claims. And if that’s not enough go power, there’s the even more formidable 900-horsepower ZR1 version of the Corvette, starting around US$150,000. The hybrid E-Ray, at US$104,900, is pretty potent, too.

But if they’re still too slow, fans of American-engineered muscle can consider the exclusive Texas-built Hennessey Venom F5, a limited-edition carbon-fibre hypercar. Ten years ago, the Hennessey became the world’s fastest production car, defeating the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport, with a top speed of 270.49 miles per hour.

That world title is much sought after, and is currently held by the Sweden-built 1,600-horsepower Koenigsegg Jesko Absolut, with a two-way average top speed of 277.8 mph. But Hennessey is still very much a contender. The company is hoping the 1,817-horsepower F5 (with 1,192 pound-feet of torque) can exceed 300 mph on the track this year.

The Hennessey Venom F5 coupe is sold out, despite a more than $2 million price tag.
Hennessey photo

Hennessey’s previous Venom GT model (introduced in 2010) was based on the Lotus Exige, with a GM LS-based engine, and was built by partner Delta Motorsport. Spokesman Jon Visscher tells Penta , “The new Venom F5, revealed in 2020, is a 100%bespoke creation—unique to Hennessey and featuring a Hennessey-designed 6.6-litre twin-turbo V8 engine boasting 1,817 horsepower, making it the world’s most powerful combustion-engine production car.” Leaps in performance like this tend to be pricey.

This is a very exclusive automobile, priced around US$2.5 million for the coupe, and US$3 million for the F5 Roadster announced in 2023. Only 30 Roadsters will be built, with a removable carbon-fiber roof. The 24 F5 coupes were spoken for in 2021, but if you really want one you could find a used example—or go topless. In a statement to Penta , company founder and CEO John Hennessey said that while the coupe “is now sold out, a handful of build slots remain for our Roadster and [track-focused] Revolution models.”

Only 24 Revolutions will be built in coupe form, priced at US$2.7 million. There’s also a rarefied roadster version of the Revolution, with just 12 to be built.

The Venom F5 Roadster has a removable carbon-fibre roof.
Hennessey photo

The Venom F5 coupe weighs only 3,000 pounds, and it’s not surprising that insane speeds are possible when combined with a hand-built motor (nicknamed “Fury”) created with power uppermost. The V8 in the F5, installed in a rear mid-engine configuration, has a custom engine block and lightweight forged aluminium pistons, billet-steel crankshaft, and forged-steel connecting rods. Twin turbochargers are featured. The F5 can reach 62 mph in less than three seconds, but top speed seems to be its claim to fame.

The driver shifts the rear-wheel-drive car via a seven-speed, single-clutch transmission with paddle shifters. The interior is not as spartan or as tight as in many other supercars, and is able to handle very tall people. The butterfly doors lift up for access.

“With 22 customer Venom F5 hypercars already delivered to customers around the world, and a newly expanded engineering team, we’re focusing the Venom F5 on delivering on its potential,” Hennessey says. “Breaking 300 mph in two directions is the goal we aim to achieve toward the end of this year to claim the ‘world’s fastest production car’ title.”

Hennessey says the car and team are ready. “Now the search is on for a runway or public road with a sufficiently long straight to allow our 1,817-horsepower, twin-turbo V8 monster to accelerate beyond 300 mph and return to zero safely.” The very competitive Hennessey said the track-focused Revolution version of the F5 set a fastest production car lap around Texas’ 3.41-mile Circuit of the Americas track in March, going almost seven seconds faster than a McLaren P1.

The Revolution features a roof-mounted central air scoop (to deliver cool air to the engine bay), a full-width rear carbon wing, larger front splitter and rear diffuser, tweaked suspension, and engine cooling. It’s got the same powertrain as the standard cars, but is enhanced to stay planted at otherworldly speeds.

The Secret to Mixing Pattern, Colour, Old and New

Here’s how the interior designer got it done.

Botanical Engineering

Dissonance and Harmony

Curve Balls and Line Drives