Eccentric pieces

PAUL SMITH, the Pepto-Bismol pink emporium on Melrose Avenue, isn’t just a magnet for fashion folks. Along with the British designer’s tailored clothing in signature stripes, stylishly eccentric housewares fill his first L.A. store, including vintage stoneware animal figures by acclaimed California potter Lisa Larsen as well as Smith’s striped china for Thomas Goode. A large library of architecture and pop culture books invite loitering, as do ornately carved benches and midcentury chairs upholstered in Smith’s psychedelic sorbet swirls. (The one-of-a-kind chairs are available by custom order, though you may want to be sitting down when you ask the price. Hint: It’s likely more than your mortgage payment.) Flying his U.K. freak flag high, Smith stocks a glass-topped, vacuum-formed plastic table ($1,545) and pottery imprinted with classic David Bowie-as-Ziggy Stardust photos by Mick Rock ($420), shown here with a leather jigsaw rug ($1,500 for 10 pieces). Smith’s carpet and needlepoint designs can be seen at the Rug Company, just across the street. Paul Smith, 8221 Melrose Ave.; (323) 951-4800; www.paulsmith.co.uk.

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AT AUCTION

Clean lines take a seat

“For me, it is about getting absolutely to the truth, a bare minimum, where there is just no excess at all,” architect Paul Tuttle (1918-2002) once said. The Santa Barbara-based designer’s 1972 Chariot chaise, shown here, is a case in point: a minimalist marriage of leather and chromed tubular steel that resembles high-tech sculpture. Though Tuttle designed hundreds of clean-lined yet luxurious tables and seating for the Swiss firm Strassle, as well as custom interiors and furniture for clients in California, his work rarely comes up for auction, says Richard Wright of the Chicago auction house Wright. It estimates that this Tuttle chair (lot 582) will sell for between $7,000 and $9,000 when it goes up for bidding Tuesday. (312) 563-0020, www.wright20.com.

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TRENDSPOTTING

Wallowing in Martha

Martha Stewart wants you to get out of the house -- and into one of hers. The domestic divinity has teamed with KB Home to produce Twin Lakes, a development in Cary, N.C., whose 600-plus homes “have characteristics similar to homes lived in by Martha Stewart in New York state and Maine.” Eight models opened to the public last week sporting interiors decorated with a hearty helping of Martha-ness. Though the houses are sold unfurnished, the models (including the Lily Pond design shown here) sport Stewart’s style, soon to be available as a furnishings collection called Martha’s Choices -- because, really, why would you buy a house and furnish it with your own taste? www.kbhome.com.

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FINDS

Pop goes the Pod collective

Joji Okazaki, the witty graphic designer who created the popular cardboard puzzle tree 3D Atomic Bonzai (www.loungego.com/Bonsai.htm), has an eye for unconventional sculpture. His new work, Pod, merges the winking eyes typically found on cheap toys with handmade resin blobjects covered in colored enamels so glossy that they look wet. Items in Okazaki’s antic anime menagerie work as tabletop curiosities and also hang easily on walls. The one-of-a-kind pieces are numbered and signed by the artist and sell for $80 to $250 at L.A. Eyeworks in Los Angeles and Costa Mesa; www.laeyeworkstore.com. Okazaki also is represented by Dirt Gallery in West Hollywood.