The Matheson
HEALDSBURG, CALIFORNIA
Architect: Cass Calder Smith
Featured product: Drape Arm 3, Custom Fold Chandelier
To house his vision of a new restaurant for the town of Healdsburg in Sonoma County’s wine country, Chef Dustin Valette chose as his site the building his great-grandfather, Honore Valette, owned and operated his bakery out of. The Matheson is a restaurant complex operating on three levels, with a formal main dining room and bar, a bustling rooftop casual dining space, and a number of private dining areas including a mezzanine stretching over the open kitchen.
To design The Matheson, Valette chose San Francisco and New York based Cass Calder Smith, which handled not only the interiors but also the architectural task of turning Valette’s great-grandfather’s single-story historic building into a three-story structure (the top level houses a private residence).
Cass Calder Smith selected SkLO to provide lighting for two key areas of the project. Not only does the design philosophy at SkLO reflect the emphasis on “makers” and craft behind Valette’s cuisine, but the project is only four blocks from the SkLO US headquarters in Healdsburg.
With the many different facets of The Matheson inhabiting multiple levels of the building, the project included two levels and an open stairwell to move guests throughout the spaces. For the three-story stairwell, Cass Calder Smith commissioned SkLO to provide a custom chandelier, based on the SkLO Fold lighting collection.
SkLO designed a chandelier consisting of 18 individual Fold pendants in clear glass. Suspended from a custom circular brass canopy, the individual pendants are suspended on black fabric-wrapped electrical cord, and are either swagged to custom ceiling hooks beyond the canopy, or hang straight down. The brass hardware is brushed and given a hand-applied wax finish. The clear glass “fold” elements are a mixture of three different lengths. Composed to be visible and give light to every level of the stairs, the organic cascading chandelier is over 23 feet / 700cm long.
For the private dining room at the back of the main level, Cass Calder Smith chose a Drape Arm 3 Chandelier. The fixture sits within an elegant circular recess deep in the ceiling at the center of the room. The chandelier’s palette of smoke transparent color glass diffusers, brushed brass hardware and black fabric-wrapped cord harmonize with the dark woods and rich wallpaper of the room.
