HUNTING &
GATHERING

TO MAKE YOUR HOUSE A HOME

Name: Hunting & Gathering for the Home
Address: San Rafael, CA, US
Telephone: 415-407-0801

Are you looking for someone to help you refresh or rearrange your rooms for greater comfort and harmony? Or to downsize? After an initial consultation, Hunting & Gathering stylist Victoria Cooper will recommend a budget-minded course of action, by suggesting:

Rearrangements of your existing furnishings/rooms for better flow and function
Recommendations and rearrangement of existing artwork and accessories for stronger presentation
Determination of ways to refresh your spaces through modernization of lighting, window treatments, area rugs, and other staples of home decor
Help with culling your current furnishings (and clutter) to clarify and freshen your spaces
Hunting and gathering to find new pieces to refresh your rooms, when desirable

Photo above shows result of combining previously owned rugs and artwork with new furnishings when a client downsized from her townhouse to an apartment in a senior living complex.

About

Victoria Cooper (Vikki) has over 30 years' experience rearranging people's living and workspaces to make them more pleasing to be in—from Boston to Boulder and Berkeley. She has worked with private clients, styled home furnishing pages and photography for web and print media, and written magazine articles on home decor and entertaining. She has an eye for color and proportion from her career as a communications director and editor on print, web, and video projects across multiple disciplines.

But, especially important, she has a love of enhancing her clients' personal and work environments so they can feel comfortable and inspired where they spend the majority of their time.

She calls her business Hunting & Gathering because she is adept at shopping online and instore for the right piece for your places--whether it's furniture, accessories, or wall hangings to make your room(s) sing with simplicity and style.

GALLERY

The following projects are representative of my work with clients, encompassing shopping for furniture, artwork, and accessories as

well as furniture rearrangement and recommendations

for walls, windows, floor coverings, and lighting. The key is finding

the focus in each space and designing around it.

Before

After

1. An empty-nester Larkspur couple did not feel their previous furnishings (left) fit their new waterfront home. The sectional sofa was dated and too primary in the room, opposite the centerpiece fireplace. And the furnishings did not express the couple’s joyful lifestyle or build in a sense of spaciousness or access to the outdoors that the new home offered.

When I found the large Van Gogh copy in oil, it became the new focal point of their living room, and we built the coloration of the room around it. (See the "other half" of the room below, where you'll notice the heavy furniture was replaced with lighter pieces and the rug replaced with an antique accent rug found in my wanderings in antique stores in Sonoma County. The blue sofa picked up the blue in the other half of the room.)

Before

After

'We truly use the whole space now that you helped us refurbish the two areas: the living room and the conversation/reading area. Thanks, too, for all the laughs and for working with our young (and giant) dog, Kobe. He really liked you, and you were very patient with him, even though he tried to eat your purse.'

2. After a rainstorm damaged the ceiling of their home, a Larkspur couple had to rebuild their living room from the top down. They had a lot of furniture inherited from their parents—Chinese porcelain and Japanese tansues, which they saved from the deluge. The challenge was to modernize the look. We mixed and matched pieces from different rooms to lighten the heaviness of furnishings in the outsized living room and purchased just a few items with contemporary styling to create the ultimate eclectic assemblage. We also switched the dining area adjacent to the kitchen to the far end of this room, which had three large windows and views of the spacious back yard. We removed two leaves from the table and added an upholstered chair beside the charming antique desk. The opposite wall in the dining area features an upright piano.

Before

After

'Vikki put things together that I never would have thought of, moving the large cabinets on either side of the fireplace to flank the kitchen doorway, for example. And moving the entire dining area to the other side of the living room! When the pandemic appeared at the end of the project, we were so happy to have a much more comfortable home to sequester in.'

3. Sometimes you need another set of educated eyes to make your choices in furnishings and accessories. This homeowner in Corte Madera has a love of antiques and rugs but didn’t have the right bed to fit the master bedroom. We canvassed many stores in the Bay Area to find this "California bed" frame whose rattan styling was not too heavy for the room. Not showing: a highboy chest of drawers against the left wall. It balances the large mirror on the diagonal wall. The bed faces French doors leading to the balcony overlooking the home's pool and hillside gardens below. To the right of the doors is another antique chest holding a TV for bedside viewing. The wallpaper is Lodi Garden by Brunschwig et Fils. The photo below this one is of the living room, where we retrieved a 'fainting couch' from storage and rearranged rugs for color and impact (hanging one on the fireplace wall to accentuate the height of the room).

'I turn to Vikki for counsel on wall colors, furniture purchase and placement, and other enhancements. She has impeccable and eclectic taste and appreciates the integration of all elements--old and new--in the home. She is not satisfied until it feels right.'

4. When a couple married and bought a condo together in Cambridge, Mass., they needed to combine disparate furnishings. Operating on the theory that all beautiful things can look good together with the right placement and layout, we agreed to make one major change that made a big difference. We moved their couch from its back to the dining area to facing out into the room from under the windows and we made an alcove in the dining room into a reading nook. These steps unified the room as one, not two spaces, while the rugs defined the functional areas. The plants brought good cheer.

'Vikki is a lot of fun to be around as she goes about her work. Her experience as a modern dancer makes her alive to energy movement in personal spaces, and her professional life as a magazine/web editor and communications director has informed her sense of composition.'

5. Here is a peek at a recent installation we did for a couple moving out of the residence where they had raised their children and lived for 30-plus years. They were moving to a retirement community with half the space but loads of lifestyle amenities.

They were attached to their dining room set and several pieces of furniture that were family heirlooms. But they were ready for new bedroom and living room furniture and for deciding how to use their second bedroom and their new terrace—accessed through glass doors from three rooms. In the above living room, we purchased a new sofa, rug, and set of swivel chairs. In the adjoining dining room, we created a focal point with the wall of photos and transitional items leading to the master bedroom entrance. A 15-foot-long, vintage Moroccan runner adds drama to the open hallway connecting the living spaces to the foyer.

Vikki has a visually stunning eye. She transformed our new condo into a showcase. Her sense of our style was immediate, then she went to work, accomplishing everything that we needed--from planning and layout design to ordering furnishings and final arrangements--all in a few short weeks.

6. When a San Francisco executive bought a Dutch Colonial house in Berkeley, he asked Hunting & Gathering to help him furnish it. He had only a dining room set and a buffet that he wanted to keep and little time to shop for the rest: from rugs and lighting to art work and wall colors. After retiring recently, he wanted to refresh the living room and primary bedroom. We lightened those rooms with new furniture and new wall colors and rugs, as well as the central staircase, which became an art gallery transition between the floors.

Everything looks so good, and it's all so gratifying, Vikki ... culminating some long-held dreams of mine--the interior redecorating, of course, but also the seismic, solar, electrical, laundry room, TV console, new artwork, etc. The feeling of completion is deeply satisfying. Thank you for working through all of that with me.