Benjamin Soleimani's Beverly Hills Home Is Grounded in Elegance
"Color is a power which directly influences the soul,” Wassily Kandinsky once said. The artist would certainly find a kindred spirit in Benjamin Soleimani of Mansour, a well-known purveyor of fine rugs. He has a natural gift when it comes to color, which is why interior designers from all over the world seek out his eye. “To me, color is like music—you don’t just see it; you feel it,” says Soleimani. “It can be calming or transporting; color can take you to another world.” And the world he created in his Beverly Hills home in collaboration with interior designer James Radin is also transporting, like stepping inside a storied English home. Abundant antique furniture, 18th- and 19th-century fireplace surrounds, and a rich palette permeate the rooms, which are set off by exceptional antique Ziegler Sultanabad and Tabriz rugs.
It’s little surprise his collection of Persian rugs would take a leading role, but perhaps none so significantly as a favorite rare antique Ziegler Sultanabad purchased in Ireland. When the rug arrived he realized the size was marked incorrectly and it wouldn’t fit the mahogany-wrapped den as he had envisioned. Undeterred, Soleimani changed the configuration of the bookcases twice and even went so far as to shave an inch off the hearth to make it work. The beautifully appointed room today reveals no evidence of the challenge but instead envelops the warm, vibrant rug like an embrace.
When it came to choosing colors for the paneling used throughout the gutted and reimagined interiors (only the facade is the original 1930s), Soleimani simply created the hues for three rooms: the dining room, breakfast room, and primary bedroom. For example, in the dining room, gilded trim and an antique carved fireplace purchased in Scotland are set off by a deep, murky blue-green. “I’m very particular about color and very sensitive to it,” he notes. “I have these colors in my mind’s eye, and so I mixed my own paint to capture that image.”
Radin, who worked on both the interior architecture and decorating, might seem like an unusual choice for Soleimani, as his aesthetic carries deep California undercurrents—a departure from his client’s English leanings. But he was the perfect moderator to keep the scheme from feeling too stuffy. “The rooms are clean and edited, while still reflecting his inherent style,” says Radin, a longtime client of Mansour. “It’s not full of chintz and slipcovers but rather classic and calm amid the antiques. My goal is to assemble the client’s viewpoint, and the idea was to trick people into thinking things had been this way for years.”
The tricks include the detailed Georgian-style paneling, a subtle mix of English and French antiques, Flemish tapestries, and one-of-a-kind light fixtures spanning different decorative eras—a gilt-wood chandelier in the dining room, a large-scale English lantern in the entry, and an unusual peacock blue dragonfly Tiffany pendant over the breakfast room table. Radin also took a collection of Turkish tiles and used them to line the back of built-in bookcases in the den.
Radin imbued the rooms with modern coffee tables and contemporary art pieces as counterpoints to works by Scottish Colorists, including artist Francis Cadell, whose paintings Soleimani has collected since his late 20s. The apple green breakfast room deformalizes the space. “Otherwise it would feel too serious with the gilding and tapestries,” says Radin. Sculpture brings welcome notes of texture and fortitude inside and out, especially through a sizeable abstract bronze piece by celebrated British artist Lynn Chadwick in the entry. “It’s a man and a woman; it’s very spiritual to me, and it has a beautiful attitude,” notes Soleimani.
Perhaps the biggest departure from the English playbook is the white, marble-laden kitchen and keeping room, where Soleimani, wife Gloria, and two teenage children spend much of their time. Its everyday appeal is unsurprising given Radin’s work on the film sets of his client Nancy Meyers, including Something’s Gotta Give and Meryl Streep’s cozy family kitchen in It’s Complicated. As Radin explains, “Benjamin wanted a classic white kitchen, but it’s full of French doors that open to the garden, inviting a color conversation with the lush green outdoors.”
A self-professed lover of the hunt, Soleimani delights in the shuffling of his treasures. “I appraise the size and style of furniture and rugs with my eye. And when I fall in love with a piece, I can usually find a home for it, but you just never know when you may find something that’s even better.”
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Featured in our March/April 2023 issue. Interior and Architectural Design by James Radin; Photography by David Tsay; Styling by Liz Strong; Written by Alice Welsh Doyle.
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