Homes: Jo's house

With some negotiation and goodwill, the interior designer does it her way.

By GLORIA DEUTSCH
Jo's house (photo credit: URIEL MESSA)
Jo's house
(photo credit: URIEL MESSA)
‘I like a fusion of traditional and contemporary,’ says Jo Leviten, who renovated an old house in Jerusalem’s Musrara neighborhood to turn it into a family home for herself, her husband, Eliot, their two children and her elderly mother-in-law, who will soon be making aliya.
The home certainly has an eclectic feel to it, with Clarice Cliff pottery rubbing shoulders with French marquetry side tables, Philippe Starck chairs with Chinese-inspired mirrors.
“I don’t like all modern,” says interior designer Leviten, who herself made aliya only a year ago. “I prefer a mix of old and new because life is like that – most people have family pieces and you have to find a way to have them all belonging in the space and to create a harmony.”
The fact that, as a new immigrant with barely a word of Hebrew, she was able to produce this fabulous home in eight weeks, speaks volumes for her talent and tenacity. With inborn Scottish resilience – she’s from Glasgow – she was able to get her teams of workers do exactly what she envisaged.
“When I worked in the UK, the workers would disappear to the pub or stop every so often for a tea break, but here there is a strong work ethic and they could turn their hands to anything,” she says. “Sometimes the finish was a bit slapdash, but with negotiation and goodwill I was able to persuade them to do it my way.”
In the final design, she utilized the archways and niches, turning them into cupboards and wardrobes. What had been a well, used until quite recently, became a separate apartment for her son with a staircase and loft built in; and the 90-cm. walls provided thick window sills for displaying some of her treasures.
All the living quarters are upstairs and the front door leads straight into the dining room.
What had been a solid door was replaced with opaque glass and a fig tree cut out of dark metal.
“I wanted to let in more light and have a design in sympathy with the house and, as there is a 100-year-old fig tree in the garden, it seemed appropriate,” she says.
The wrought iron light fitting over the black glass table was especially made to contain candles, and to this she added some antique French crystal.
“It’s unusual but functional,” she says.
Two Charles Rennie Macintosh armchairs in the Glasgow style are a fond reminder of home.
Through the archway one can glimpse the master bedroom. On closer inspection, the floor is American walnut parquet and the large room is white with accents of teal in the velvet headboard and the shaggy rug. The gold chaise longue is a Laura Ashley design.
“I think a bedroom should be a place to luxuriate – a refuge where you can indulge yourself,” she says.
The living room is where she keeps some of her chinoiserie – old vases turned into table lamps and various sculptures acquired over the years.
The vases are all different. “I don’t like an over-coordinated look,” she says. “I think it looks contrived.”
The Clarice Cliff plaques, which belonged to her grandmother, occupy one wall between two arched windows. A vase with ceramic tulips perched on a Chinese pedestal is all her own work; two dark gray velvet couches face each other, and on one of the niches hangs a painting by Scottish artist Moira Scott Payne.
The long, thin gallery kitchen has two ovens installed in niches cut into the stone walls and is actually, she says, an enjoyable space to work in. There is even space for a breakfast bar on the other end of the stove.
One of the downstairs rooms has been turned into a den with built-in concrete seating around the walls decorated in blue and lime-green cushions. This is the place for watching TV and chilling out.
Finally, what was the well is now a modern split-level living and sleeping space for her son.
The upper level, closed off by glass walls, has a futon for sleeping and a decorative rocking horse from home, and is reached by a marble staircase.
“We love living in Musrara,” enthuses Leviten. “It’s close to everything and it’s very arty. The Jerusalem Print Studio is there, we have the Naggar School of Photography and there’s the Ma’aleh Film School. There’s a lot going on in Musrara, arts-wise. It’s very lively and colorful and you really feel alive here.”