At a Van Nuys auction house earlier this month, bidding on a seemingly simple 1940s aluminum and brass floor lamp by Greta Grossman rose to $10,000, then with the crowd buzzing, climbed past $15,000. Then $20,000. And $25,000. By the time the gavel fell and the applause in the room had died down, an unidentified bidder had bought the lamp for $37,500 -- a record for Grossman and a sign of how this pioneering female designer, once a footnote in Midcentury Modern history, is on her way to becoming a household name.

Greta Magnusson Grossman (1906-99) was a prize-winning decorator and furniture...

Let’s get one thing straight: The fruit from the jujube tree has nothing in common with the corn-starch confectionary of the same name. You won’t lose a filling while chewing on a jujube right off the tree. It has the crisp texture and refreshing sweetness of apples. When dried, the concentrated sugar turns the jujube into something like a giant raisin.

Also called Chinese dates, jujubes (Ziziphus jujuba) have been on our menu for thousands of years, with reason: The trees grow easily, tolerate cold and drought, and produce a lot of fruit, even at a young age. Jujubes spread from...

THR Design Hollywood at the Century is the somewhat cryptic name for a simple concept: a rare look inside an exclusive, multimillion-dollar property.

The design show house, opening Friday, will be staged in the same building where two years ago Candy Spelling paid $35 million for the top two floors.

Plunk down $40 for a ticket and you can pass through the security gates of the 42-story, 4-acre luxury towerbuilt by Robert A.M. Stern Architects, toss the valet your keys and ride a private elevator to the 20th floor. Once you’ve reached the private vestibule, step inside two elegant...

If you love the Malibu Potteries tiles that lend so many 1920s and '30s homes their period charm, here's the ultimate DIY event: a chance to make a Malibu Potteries-inspired tile of your own.

On Sunday, supporters of the Adamson House in Malibu have organized a workshop to raise money for the historic property's repair fund. Tickets to the tax-deductible event are $200 per person. If that seems steep, just remind yourself that you're not only making a cool memento and helping to preserve a national historic site and California historical landmark, but also enjoying a Champagne lunch as part of...

As a designer of custom jewelry, Amanda Keidan sometimes takes delicate vintage pieces and reworks them into intricately sculptured, modern collections.

The same could be said for her sunny, art-filled Venice home, where gold accents blend with sparkling glass, and vintage barrel chairs share the living room floor with new Ikea ottomans and a cool lamp bought off the flash sales site Gilt.

“Everything is very specific,” Keidan said of her decorating style. “I want your eye to look at something. I like having things to look at — things that are pretty.”

In the...

Anyone who's ever lived anywhere probably has done it: bought a can of paint that turned out to be the wrong color and, out of sheer laziness or confusion about what to do, left it sitting in the garage for years. Under the new California Paint Stewardship Program beginning Oct. 19, Californians can bring unused cans of paint to designated retailers and other drop-off sites that have partnered with the organization to recycle them.

Customers will also be charged a fee when buying paints to cover some costs of the program.

Leftover paint is considered a household hazardous material that is...

Whether nibbling injera flatbread in Little Ethiopia or sampling Salvadoran pupusas in the Byzantine-Latino Quarter, you could have much to experience in a series of free tours Sunday collectively called Found L.A: Festival of Neighborhoods.

The nonprofit group L.A. Commons is organizing the daylong event, which covers more than a dozen diverse neighborhoods. The celebration will be like L.A. Commons' monthly Trekking L.A. tours, during which residents act as docents in their own neighorhoods. 

Highlights of Found L.A. include an early-morning stroll along South Central Avenue with City...

The sixth annual Gathering of the Community Gardens is Saturday at Ocean View Farms in Mar Vista, with live music, children’s activities, a free lunch, tours of the garden’s six acres of plots and informal workshops on seed saving, bio-intensive gardening and composting.

Guests also will get a chance to see the renowned (and we do mean renowned) composting facility at the 35-year-old community garden. Ocean View Farms has what is easily the largest and most productive composting installation at any community garden in Southern California.

Though the garden is usually closed to...

There’s so much waste in a home renovation. Piles of it seemed to grow in our backyard as the weeks of our remodel passed, no matter how much we tried to minimize it. Our designer, Jeremy Levine, came up with a few ideas for reusing what no longer worked in our little 1917 Mid-City house that was getting a much needed update.

The one we love most is our desk, which runs along three sides of an alcove off our new kitchen.

When we moved into our house about a decade ago, we had the original wood floors re-sanded — and were told it would be the last time that could be done.

This time...