From framed rocks to oversized Asian deities, interior designer Josh Mason’s Downtown Dubai home is brimming with interesting and original reflections of his work and travels, discovers Melanie Hunt
“It’s just stuff and it’s been nice to collect it, but no matter what you have, it is eventually going to go to someone else. You are just a custodian of it for a while,” reflects Josh Mason as he surveys the living room of his Downtown Dubai Southridge apartment. When he arrived in Dubai five years ago to take up a role with international design and architecture firm HBA International, the interior designer had just two pieces of artwork with him – a charcoal drawing of his mother and a shadow painting made by his father in his student days.
Today, Mason’s apartment is brimming with the beautiful and the interesting. “The one thing I really focus on when I travel is artefacts and art. When you look around, there is not much actual furniture here; it’s really just a sofa, two chairs and a couple of stools.”
In creating this space, Mason wanted to evoke the open feel of the loft apartments and warehouses that he had lived in during his early career in Atlanta, Georgia, and make a place for entertaining where friends could easily congregate and socialise.
He chose the Downtown Dubai area as it was convenient for work and, at that time, Emaar Southridge was the only completed development that offered the kind of aspect and layout he was looking for. “The view of the construction in the desert is just fantastic. I wanted to face out as you get to watch the city being built, and you are not staring at an urban environment; you are looking out across the desert.
“As interior designers, we typically stare at colours all day long and when I come home I want to rest, which is why the interior here is pretty much monochromatic, with browns and beiges.”
The neutral tones of the apartment evoke the colours of the desert landscape and provide an ideal backdrop for the fascinating collection of items picked up over the course of Mason’s travel and work.
Mason likes taking a piece and finding an additional function for it. Many of his collected artefacts serve a dual purpose as furniture, providing additional surfaces and supporting other objects d’art. For example, he made some small modifications to a reproduction Arabic celestial globe found at the Pride of Kashmir warehouse in Al Quoz and had them set in preformed metal table bases to create a pair of striking side tables.
A number of the accessories in Mason’s apartment were sourced from the warehouses and garden centres of the industrial area behind Times Square. A Chinese lantern carved from volcanic rock was bought from the Dubai Garden Centre and deconstructed to form a series of table tops, which sit on the Turkish silk rug in the centre of the living room.
An Asian deity, discovered tucked away in a dusty warehouse, fills a corner of the bedroom and appropriately faces East. Mason was so concerned that the beautiful marble carving would be damaged if left where it was that he felt obligated to bring it home. “She had to be weighed before delivery and was only 20 kilograms below the maximum allowed by the building’s lift. It took five men to get her here; she had to be dragged in on sacks.”
An inset wall in the simple bedroom is made of black chalkboard paint, for messages. The room also features Asian bamboo fishing pots, which are picked up by directional lighting to cast interesting shadows across the message wall.
A long table running the width of the living room wall is a key focal point and provides a base for books, art and other objects. Heavy slate paving slabs were stained and painted with wood varnish and placed on wood over a series of metal Ikea table bases. “It was easier to construct this in a modular way, than to source a single piece of stone. It may eventually grow in to one big table as it can be dismantled and put together in another way,” he explains. Hanging over the table are six uniform canvases painted with acrylic, wood stain and applied gilding, as Mason wanted to create something “that was a bit celestial”.
The panels are illuminated with picture lights, which Mason admits are not something that modern designers often go for, but he still likes it as it “enables you to get light from a certain height, which will highlight specific features”. As basic lighting for modern apartments is really geared towards task lighting, rather than creating mood, Mason has introduced alternative light at different levels; from the floor, midway and some feature lights higher up, to create ambience and illuminate other artefacts.
Mason’s art collection is truly inspired, and a testament to the fact that he likes to look up galleries before travelling. While spending time in Ethiopia, he visited the artist Tegegne Yirdaw at his home and was drawn to a sketchbook of pen and ink architectural drawings. He purchased some watercolours, but also asked if he could buy some of the sketches, which the artist saw only as his personal notes for future works. The architectural pen and ink sketches are beautifully drawn and framed simply, and wonderfully illustrate the cave carvings of the area. Mason later discovered that the British Princess Anne had also been drawn to the same artist and returned to England with some of his work.
Further recording Mason’s travels are a series of indigenous rocks collected from places of interest, especially those where there are stone buildings and carvings. These are fixed with brackets inside Ikea frames, with notes on the reverse recording where and when the rock was found. Each is a memory of a travel experience, although colleagues and friends also bring him rocks from unusual locations to add to his growing collection. He admits that returning through airports with rocks in his pockets has not always been easy.
An African shield and head mas, found at the Antique Museum and mounted on an unusual Pottery Barn easel dominates a corner of the living space. Mason says the easel came first and when he bought the carvings, provided an ideal display mount, especially since the hinged brackets are evocative of the figure’s arms.
Every piece in this apartment has been lovingly collected, has its own special story and has found a loving home – even if it is only until it is passed on to someone new.
Follow us @LifeNationalUAE
Follow us on Facebook for discussions, entertainment, reviews, wellness and news.
