The Smiths consulted with designer Waldo Fernandez to get the interiors under way, but for the past couple of years the rooms have been fine-tuned by Los Angeles–based decorator Judith Lance. “When I started, the footprint, finish materials, stone, and paint were already in place,” Lance says. “The aesthetic note was set. Everything [I added] had to look handcrafted but at the same time refined and sophisticated.”
Using reference books on tribal jewelry as her points of departure, Lance ennobled specific rooms with exquisite custom-made pieces. In the living room she installed a serpent-themed fireplace screen of copper mesh, hand-hammered bronze, and carnelian cabochons. A cloistered seating area off the formal dining room boasts foliate sconces of twisted brass wire by artist Mary Brogger and a bespoke chandelier of bronze and leather, with rock-crystal beads hand-strung by Lance’s assistants. In the master suite the designer’s coup de théâtre is a bed canopy constructed of tiny ball chains, which is suspended from the ceiling by links of bronze.
Samuelson’s spatial composition, full of secret nooks and tranquil alcoves, utilizes generously swooping curves and unorthodox geometries so the many rooms, both large and small, flow and connect like a lyrical run-on sentence. “The idea was no dead ends,” Will says. “To create an infinite cycle that represented what Jada and I hoped for our love.”
QUICK INFO ABOUT WILL SMITH
Willard Christopher “Will” Smith, Jr. (born September 25, 1968) is an American actor, producer, and rapper. He has enjoyed success in television, film and music. In April 2007, Newsweek called him the most powerful actor in Hollywood. Smith has been nominated for four Golden Globe Awards, two Academy Awards, and has won four Grammy Awards. Fourteen of the nineteen fiction films he has acted in have accumulated worldwide gross earnings of over $100 million, and four took in over $500 million in global box office receipts. As of 2011, his films have grossed $5.7 billion in global box office.[4] He received Best Actor Oscar nominations for Ali and The Pursuit of Happyness.