Quick Takes With: Michael Breland and Peter Harper

The next design duo to watch? That would be Michael Breland and Peter Harper, the partners (in life and in work) behind LA-based Breland-Harper, an interdisciplinary design firm that blends architecture, design, and landscape architecture. Photos of their own home, in the hills surrounding the Silver Lake reservoir, landed in our inbox a few months back, and we were all quickly smitten by the way the two “use light and space as decorative devices,” as Julie succinctly puts it. (You can read our recent feature on the house here.) 

In today’s Quick Takes, Michael and Peter pause their current projects (“a restaurant in Culver City and restoring a Bertram Goodhue in Pasadena,” among others, and “planning the next shows in our studio/gallery, which we started in 2024 with Jay McCafferty: Solar Painting”) to write in with two dead-simple kitchen must-haves, three spots to shop, and a budget-friendly ethos to live by. Read on…

You’re invited to dinner. What’s your go-to gift?

Peter: Flowers sent the day after.

Michael: A jar of local honey.

What’s on your bedside table?

Peter: A stack of books, shells to remember beach-combing dog walks, a silver tray with hair ties.

Michael: Everything but a cellphone.

What’s your desert island design/art/architecture-related book?

Peter: A dream scenario: “If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.” To Varro, in Ad Familiares IX, 4, Cicero. Currently, Michel Pastoureau’s color series: White, Blue, Green…

Michael: Richard Diebenkorn: The Catalogue Raisonné.

What’s a film or TV show whose aesthetic has stuck with you?

Peter: Out of Africa. Truly, it has haunted me in the most beautiful way since I was a very, very little boy. The collision of styles, places, cultures, but really the messaging. Tea on that veranda.

Michael: Anything Merchant Ivory.

Which Instagram account do you go to for design inspiration?

Michael: @creativegrowth.

What has been your best house upgrade?

A Hästens bed.

A simple or budget-friendly design move you wish you’d known sooner?

Stop. Look. Do less.

Our favorite sheets are…

Frette, percale.

Our favorite paint color for the bedroom is…

Any color that cultivates serenity.

My unpopular design opinion is…

Peter: Less is more. Absence, emptiness breeds opportunity.

Michael: A blank white wall does not always need to be filled.

Your design pet peeve?

Peter: Poor quality. Neither expense nor complication are indications of quality.

Michael: Art/decorative art/furniture trophy rooms.

My go-to kitchen utensil is…

Peter: A $4 French beechwood spoon.

Michael: A white flour-sack dish towel.

First design love?

Peter: My mother (she taught me everything) and Elsie de Wolfe’s A House in Good Taste (also from my mother).

Michael: Peter.

What item from your closet do you have on repeat?

Peter: A white long-sleeved button-down.

Michael: A navy blue T-shirt.

Favorite design shop to visit (online or in person)?

Peter: Tom Stansbury Antiques in Newport Beach. I happened upon this truly exemplary treasure and its proprietor when working on a house in Corona del Mar, CA. Tom’s shop represents a level of connoisseurship and quality in the antique business that I was reared on and which is becoming increasingly rare. I have so many talented men like Tom to thank for their patience, generosity, education, and impeccable eye.

Michael: Lorenzi Milano, discovered a very, very long time ago, when it was still known as G. Lorenzi, is a mast bearer and champion of a wealth of craft traditions. Their offerings underscore a rare point of view: that even things hidden in pockets, drawers, or bags should be of immense quality and thoughtful design, even if you are the only one that sees and uses them.

Both: Minnie Olga. Part art, part magical realism, altogether beauty. The trappings of a trousseau in a Márquez novel. Whenever gift shopping, this is a first stop.

What is the last thing you purchased for your house?

Peter: A custom fireplace screen to prevent a singed standard poodle tail.

Michael: A piece from the Creative Growth 50th anniversary show.

Something you’re coveting?

Peter: Healthier cypress trees and happier citrus trees—a multiyear battle!

Michael: I am content. More time with my partner and dog at the beach.

I don’t leave the house without…

Peter: A sweater. It is a Northern California necessity and affectation.

Thanks so much, Michael and Peter! Follow their work @breland_harper and breland-harper.com.

N.B.: Photography by Justin Chung.