When big-screen set decorators envision a cozy house — a la the middle-class environs that populate John Hughes movies such as “Home Alone” — Craftsman furnishings seem a must to complete the picture.
“Hollywood loves this stuff,” says Modern Bungalow store owner Kathy Sultan.
Ever the saleswoman, Sultan would wager that Craftsman-style furniture fits well in most any setting, from high-rise condos to high-altitude cabins and certainly period bungalows like the one in Park Hill she shares with her husband and business parter, Ed.
Were it not for the challenge of outfitting their own 2,600-square-foot, dark-brick 1919 house, the Sultans might never have opened Modern Bungalow.
The independent Denver home store is devoted to stocking new pieces alongside reproductions from that iconic, early-1900s era in American design known as the Arts and Crafts movement. The style is simple, wood and handcrafted; a rebellion against Victorian opulence. Furniture maker Gustav Stickley was its lightning rod. Period Stickley pieces are now museum-worthy collectibles.
“There shouldn’t be anything in your home that doesn’t have a personal story attached to it,” says Kathy, who sits on the board of Denver’s Old House Society and works on that organization’s annual Old House Fair.
“We encourage people to at least give a tip of the hat to the style of their home,” adds Ed. “Have a piece or two that matches the era.”
Some of the Sultans’ go-to tips for older homes:
• Refrain from painting woodwork.
• Refinish rather than tear out original floors, fixtures and windows.
• Avoid bingeing on vivid, overstimulating color.
The Sultans made their first home together in the 1990s in bungalow-rich northern California. Together they frequented that state’s well-established Craftsman-furniture retailers and became familiar with the West Coast’s modern-day Arts and Crafts revivalist furniture makers.
Her retail career reaches back to a late-1970s gig in Macy’s Herald Square store in New York. By 2000, an administrative job with a national game-store chain prompted the Sultans’ move to Colorado.
At the time, only three homes in Park Hill were for sale. This bungalow was one.
“People hadn’t kept it up very well,” Ed Sultan recalls. “I walked in and thought, ‘I’ve got 10 years’ worth of projects!’ “
The move and the house also spurred a deeper interest in the Arts and Crafts movement and sent them looking for representative furniture. Modern Bungalow followed in 2004.
“I knew nothing about retail,” Ed says. “(Kathy) has been on the front lines . . .
“She makes it go, and I make it pretty.”
The University Hills Plaza store, at 2594 S. Colorado Blvd., currently carries 17 like-minded furniture lines. Samples pepper the Sultans’ home, like the triple-lamp, counterweighted Architects and Heroes fixture over the table in the dining room, where accents include funky folk art, inherited antiques, fine-art pottery, and pictures displayed in Ed Sultan’s own Stickley-inspired picture frames.
He’s the son of an electrician and a graphic designer by trade. Sultan is also a self-described “tool man of the universe” who builds Craftsman- style furniture that often has unusual shapes and such features as hidden drawers.
“There’s a lot of my furniture in this neighborhood,” he says.
One Sultan piece that’s in the house and also sells in the store for about $800 is his half-moon end table.
John Thompson knows it well.
As the story goes, Thompson and his wife were shopping at Modern Bungalow one day when Ed Sultan noticed his customer toting along a folded hot-rod magazine.
“It’s the love of my life, these old cars,” says Thompson, a retired Denver police commander and self-taught mechanic and carpenter.
Instead of talking with Thompson about furniture, Ed Sultan zeroed in on hot rods, and a friendship was born.
“My wife and I bought a little furniture, and then we built (Ed) a car,” Thompson says of the 1934 Ford Coupe that Sultan keeps in the garage behind his house. “I did the welding, he did all the detailing, and together we painted it in the garage.”
Then the guys struck a deal: An old Chevy engine of Thompson’s — removed from his own 1932 Ford High Boy Roadster — would go into Sultan’s car in exchange for one of the furniture man’s half- moon end tables.
“If you give him a challenge, he’s on it, like now,” says Thompson of Sultan. “I figured him out real quick.”
About two years ago, Thompson got the idea to replicate a 1910 Prairie lamp. He borrowed an original from a friend, then Sultan drafted the plans on his computer. The guys built four of those, and then eight of a second, original, Arts and Crafts-style lamp they call the Oak Park Lantern. It’s for sale at Modern Bungalow for $1,800. “For the most part, it’s one of a kind,” Thompson says of the lamp.
He’s also filled his 1960s custom home in south Denver’s Pinehurst Estates with Craftsman furniture.
“It’s just something that grows on you,” he says. “It’s straight, simple furniture that has its own kind of beauty.”
But instead of a reproduction, Denver’s Old House Society Founder Elizabeth Wheeler is most fond of an original fixture in the Sultans’ home.
“I particularly appreciate their sunroom,” Wheeler says of an inviting nook with three sides of windows at the front of the bungalow. It features two oversized chairs — one leather, one upholstered — that were inspired by Stickley’s iconic Morris chair. The Oak Park Lantern, with its glowing leaded glass base, tops a wicker table at the center of this room packed with happy plants. Overhead is the object of Wheeler’s affection: one of the home’s original, double- pendant fixtures.
“That room has such ambiance,” Wheeler says. “I could curl up there with my book and have my dog at my feet and my cat in my lap.”
Elana Ashanti Jefferson: 303-954-1957 or ejefferson@denverpost.com
