From the steep driveway, Lisa Rissetto’s home on a Woodside hilltop looks like an unassuming California ranch style spread, with a curving driveway and a taupe facade. But the inside is a surprising mid-century modern masterpiece.
The same is true at her design studio in San Francisco, where she worked her way up from merchandizing at Esprit de Corps in the 1980s to become president of her own leather handbag and accessory business. Outside, the three-story cement building is plain and austere. But inside is something else entirely — a vibrant, light-filled work space that has such a cool vibe and views of the bay that it’s been used for advertising photo shoots.
If design is a sensibility, perhaps it is no wonder that Lisa has surrounded herself with some of the best of it at her office in town and her home in the country.
Growing up in Bergen County, New Jersey, in the 1960s and ’70s, her influences were strong and clear. Her father was an architect and professor at Columbia University in New York and designed the family’s modern home that neighbors called “The Jetsons’ House” after the space-age cartoon family. Her mother was a style maven, uninhibited to wear a Bonnie Cashin-designed bright orange leather coat with brass toggles.
“That’s all I ever knew,” said Lisa, now 49. “It was different from what everyone else grew up with.” (There were no La-Z-Boy recliners with upholstered American eagles at her house.)
And it’s probably fair to say her home she shares with her husband and three children doesn’t quite conform to those of her neighbors in the horse country of Woodside. Sure, she has an acre, two horses and a rustic old barn that would be an ideal setting for a Ralph Lauren brochure.
But this is a woman who knows a Mies van der Rohe, Jean Prouve and Serge Mouille when she sees it. And a walk through her front door proves it. When she and her husband bought the house in 1995, they quickly tore down the interior walls of the main rooms to open up the floor plan, pulling in light from the back wall of windows deep into the dining and living rooms.
Once inside, you are greeted with a gallery-like space that’s spare and sleek, with pops of lime green and zebra. An extremely rare spider-like industrial lamp by Mouille, who was a mid-century French goldsmith and industrial designer, hangs like a mobile over the dining room table. The table chairs are Aalto, covered in vintage green linen.
In the living room, a low-slung avocado couch and oblong coffee table were designed by T. H. Robsjohn-Gibbings, a British-born architect and furniture designer who worked in the United States from the 1930s through the ’50s. Lisa acquired three of Van de Rohe’s famous leather Barcelona chairs at auction in Chicago — two a matched pair from the 1960s and the third produced in 1970. A slatted bench in the living room and a bubble lamp over the kitchen table are both classics by George Nelson. Some of her favorites, though, are pieces from the house she grew up in, including the bright red Bertoia chair in the corner.
Bringing depth and personality into the modern space, Lisa’s collection of female portraits picked up at flea markets from Paris to Alameda rest atop a wall unit she had manufactured in the wood-and-metal industrial style of Prouve.
Her sense of style extends up Highway 280 to Bryant Street in San Francisco, where the interior of the concrete building is illuminated by a wall of industrial windows. More than a dozen designers sketching spring fashions and mulling over leather samples and metal buckles collaborate in the bright natural light.
It’s a business she helped build with former Esprit executive George Hensler, who started the company that designs and manufactures accessories for major retailers. When he retired in 2004 and Lisa took over, she fulfilled her dream of designing her own line of handbags. Her company still bears the G.Hensler name, but she labeled the California-casual line of supple Italian leather bags “49 Sq.Mi.,” an ode to the geography of San Francisco.
And while many are in the versatile blacks and browns and burgundies, some of her favorites are in the color of her mother — the bright oranges, soft yellows and rich greens.
When her mother died, Lisa went through her closet and found 12 leather coats — all Bonnie Cashin originals. She reconditioned the leather, and still wears the bright orange one with brass toggles. And it looks fabulous with a sumptuous “49 Sq.Mi.” bag slung over the shoulder.
Like her mother before her, she wears it well.
Update:
This post is featured in the San Jose Mercury News Home and Garden section here.
Here’s the complete slideshow:
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I wonder how many people realise that leather isn’t just from a cow. Many animals from sheep, goat and pig have their skins produced into leather bags and other clothing too! We love leather bags.