great rooms

One Foot in New York for Two L.A. ‘Art Hoarders’

Joe Lucas and David Heikka’s cozy West Village rental.

The living room. The vintage farm table (to the right) was found in a flea market in the South of France. It’s pulled out for dinner. Photo: Karyn Millet
The living room. The vintage farm table (to the right) was found in a flea market in the South of France. It’s pulled out for dinner. Photo: Karyn Millet

We are art hoarders,” says interior designer Joe Lucas, admitting that he falls in love with art and furniture he finds for his showroom but often keeps pieces for his and his partner David Heikka’s own homes. The two are based in Los Angeles, but in the past few years they have found themselves for about a week a month in New York, where Lucas has opened a branch of his L.A showroom, Harbinger, and Heikka, the vice president for retail at Parachute Home, has been opening new locations. Tired of camping out with friends and staying in hotels during their business trips, they rented this West Village one bedroom as a pied-à-terre and proceeded to make it their own.

“Nothing is fancy,” Lucas says of the décor in the apartment. “We’re a mix of things found in France or on our travels mixed with random, crappy cheap stuff we find in flea markets.”

It was also a rental with a few quirks. “The kitchen was the one bummer,” Lucas says of the tiny galley space, which needed an upgrade (they hit up Ikea). Neither was there any closet space in the bedroom (solved by Ikea, again), and of course the entire apartment needed a good paint job. “It has the typical New York, like, 200 coats of paint,” he quips.

The living room features lavish hand-painted wallpaper panels from Fromental that have been cut up and framed to hang on one wall; a coffee table is another find that had been destined for his showroom. “Of course, I bought it in France for Harbinger,” Lucas says, “and that was the first thing we pulled for the apartment and then we schemed the entire place around the colors. We built everything around that.” The framed art on the wall between the doors was found at Roman and Williams Guild and was originally meant for a client, but it also found its way to their new home.

They stayed put last year after the pandemic hit, but now they are back on their bicoastal schedule, which means more time in their cozy floor-through, packed with vintage finds and the newly designed pieces Lucas moves between showroom and apartment. “The beauty of the apartment is that it’s sort of like an extra showroom,” says Lucas.

The vintage Gio Ponti armchair by the fireplace is upholstered in an Imogen Heath Textile. The wood frame chair is the Alisal Armchair from the Harbinger by Hand Collection and is upholstered in Belgium linen. “That’s a great Zackery Tyler plaster painting over the sideboard,” Lucas says. Photo: Karyn Millet
They redid the kitchen with Ikea black-fronted cabinet doors and a Waterworks sink. The butcher-block counter is also Ikea. Photo: Karyn Millet
The bedroom is as large as the living room so it can easily accommodate Lucas’s Sellig bed in oak designed for Harbinger. The bedcover is from Parachute Home. The antique French writing desk near the window doubles as a worktable. The Egyptian chair between the windows is Paul Ferrante and the drawing on the wall between the windows is by Jonathan Kent Adams. Photo: Karyn Millet
The Oyster Bay slatted console (left) beneath the gallery wall is by Harbinger. Finding the Ikea Pax wardrobes with cork doors saved them from building out closets. Heikka painted the stripes. “They’re great storage,” Lucas says of the pieces, “but the cork is just a laminate so it’s not quite deep enough to use as a bulletin board. It’s great because we didn’t need to do built-in closets. Instead we thought, Let’s do something cheap and cheerful.Photo: Karyn Millet.
The Oyster Bay slatted console (left) beneath the gallery wall is by Harbinger. Finding the Ikea Pax wardrobes with cork doors saved them from buildin... The Oyster Bay slatted console (left) beneath the gallery wall is by Harbinger. Finding the Ikea Pax wardrobes with cork doors saved them from building out closets. Heikka painted the stripes. “They’re great storage,” Lucas says of the pieces, “but the cork is just a laminate so it’s not quite deep enough to use as a bulletin board. It’s great because we didn’t need to do built-in closets. Instead we thought, Let’s do something cheap and cheerful.Photo: Karyn Millet.
The bathroom’s wainscot was not to Lucas’s taste. “I actually hate checkerboard pattern, and the black-and-white was so severe, “ he says. “But we were not going to rip the tile out, so we decided: Let’s turn it on its head and do something equally wacky that no one would ever think to pair together.” He opted for Zak & Fox wallpaper to counter the checkerboard. “It’s like the battle of two big patterns, and somehow, in my mind, they work together.” Photo: Karyn Millet
One Foot in New York for Two L.A. ‘Art Hoarders’