Wednesday, June 1, 2005

Going to great Payne

By MARY BETH BRECKENRIDGE
Knight Ridder Newspapers

The star of HGTV’s “Designing for the Sexes” is now designing for the masses. Michael Payne, the Los Angeles interior designer who gained national exposure by mediating couples’ design differences on television, has created a diverse furniture collection for California-based Powell Co.

The collection comprises four style groups, aimed at the 18-to-35 age group and priced to go easy on the checkbooks of people furnishing first apartments or houses. Three of those groups were unveiled in High Point, N.C., at the International Home Furnishings Market, and the fourth will debut at the new Las Vegas Furniture Market in July.

Payne has been designing furniture since he opened his own firm, Michael Payne Design, in 1980. But until “Designing for the Sexes” hit the air, he said, the only people who saw his work were his clients and their families and friends.

The show put his designs on display for millions of viewers. “And now, instead of people just seeing it on TV, they can actually own it,” Payne said.

The styles represented in Payne’s collection are as varied as the tastes of his TV clients. One of the furniture groups introduced at High Point, the 7 Series, is boldly contemporary; another, called Hampton, has a country look; and the third, Sloane, is an urban line inspired by the hip sophistication of London’s Sloane Square.

All, however, were designed to appeal to both men and women — the cornerstone of his HGTV series. All three groups demonstrate what he called “elegant simplicity,” with attractive lines but nothing overly ornate.

The 7 Series is named for the number’s shape, which Payne said he found himself drawing over and over when he was sketching the furniture. The top edges of many of the pieces, the table legs and even the drawer pulls all have that distinctive shape — a straight horizontal line perpendicular to a gentle curve that arches slightly inward.

Payne called the 7 Series “pure” for its lack of excess ornamentation. The only decoration is a narrow band of metal that outlines the furniture, a detail that almost disappears against the pieces made of light maple but stands out against those in a darker cherry.

“It’s all about simplicity of line,” he said.

Like the 7 Series, the Sloane group is contemporary, but it’s more elegant than edgy. The furniture gets its sophistication from details such as the pronounced grain of the walnut veneer, brushed chrome drawer hardware that looks like cutaway portions of pipes and repeats the shape of the metal legs, and vertical, rounded moldings called reeding, which add a quiet sort of decoration.

The group is intended for “the people who want smart things,” Payne said, “but they don’t want to scream it.”

Those content to whisper about their taste will probably be drawn to Payne’s Hampton group, a line of country furniture that Payne described as being “a little more up-rent” from the casual cottage style. The furniture has the warmth of country, but in a simple, fuss-free form.”

The first piece Payne designed in the collection was the china cabinet, with a classic pattern of overlapping arches on the door. He liked the arch design so much, he said, that he repeated it as a decorative element on the other pieces.

The furniture combines a weathered, painted finish in a cream color with natural-finished pine. Glass pulls give the pieces a bit of sparkle.

All the groups in his collection include bedroom, casual dining and home-entertainment furniture as well as occasional pieces such as consoles and coffee tables.

They all come at prices that Payne hopes will make them widely accessible —the Sloane dining table, for example, will retail for less than $500 and a console table in the 7 Series for $200 or less. But he cautioned against equating affordable with cheap. The pieces are solidly engineered and well-built, he said, even though many of the pieces have a delicate look.

Payne hinted that his furniture collection will grow.

“You’ve only seen the first,” he said. “We’ve just started.”