Functional Design is Elementary

Sherlock Holmes’s Eclectic Décor Reflects a Mind in Motion

Sherlock Holmes may be a highly decorated detective, but he's not about to win any awards from Good Housekeeping.

Holmes is, after all, usually too busy solving crimes to clean up around the place – never mind to pore over the latest Pottery Barn catalog for the perfect throw pillow.  “Sherlock’s philosophy is one of function over form.  He lives to do what he does, and eating and sleeping are totally secondary,” explains Andrew Bernard, the production designer for CBS’ hit sophomore series, Elementary.  And so, it becomes Bernard’s job to make sure Holmes’s home reflects the great man’s passions – and lack thereof – all while still making it an attractive space where more than 12 million viewers want to spend an hour every Thursday night.

For Elementary’s pilot episode, producers picked a classic brownstone in New York’s Harlem as Holmes’s office and abode, and still use that location for scenes of the house’s exterior, supposedly in Brooklyn.  But when Holmes and his sober companion-turned-sidekick Joan Watson, played by Jonny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu, became permanent fixtures on the CBS schedule, Bernard and his team replicated the structure’s somewhat deteriorated interior on a Queens soundstage, with some enlargements and other concessions to allow for ease of camera movement and improved sight lines.

"Sunlight" streams through the windows
of Holmes and Watson's brownstone,
in reality inside a Queens soundstage.

Bernard explains that, having scouted many brownstones throughout his career, “I often find that the woodwork usually holds up, and it’s the plaster walls and wall treatments that have fallen away.”  So he and his team set out to replicate authentic  19^th Century carvings, with fluted moldings and medallions they ordered from a nearby lumberyard experienced in catering to TV and film.  The team outfitted several rooms with built-in pocket shutters and transom windows which are not only authentic to the brownstone’s Victorian vintage, but also allow the show’s director of photography to get creative with patterns of sunlight and shadow to suit the mood of any scene.

Lacking a bed, Holmes sometimes sacks out
on this beat-up leather couch.  The show's
set designers imagined that this midcentury patterned
rug would have been left by previous tenants;
 it's actually new, but they stained and frayed it.

As Elementary has explained, Sherlock’s building is one of many owned by his wealthy father; and as Bernard and his team further surmised when setting out to decorate the space, many of Holmes’s pieces of furniture would actually be items left behind by previous occupants.  For these pieces, like a purple velvet couch for the living room or a turn-of-the-20^th-century settee for under the stairs, they combed area thrift shops, as well as online sources such as ebay and craigslist.  For other items, they relied on reproductions of classic designs from throughout the last century, like a brown leather club chair from Restoration Hardware for the living room, and a space-age patterned rug – which they then stained and frayed.

Watson and Holmes around their
rococo "kitchen table."

As Bernard explains, he got some instruction on Holmes furnishings straight from the Elementary scripts; for example, the show’s creator and executive producer Rob Doherty insists that
Sherlock have no bed or formal bedroom, preferring instead to crash on a midcentury black leather-cushioned couch in what was originally the brownstone’s billiard room.  And still other items, Bernard adds, were chosen mostly for their shapes, from the sleekness of an aluminum desk to the rolling curves of the wooden rococo desk Holmes and Watson use as a kitchen table.

Holmes and Watson amid the distressed,
"unfinished" walls and built-in pocket
window shutters of their brownstone.

In all, before starting production, Bernard’s Elementary team had just four weeks to create a space that looks like it’s been standing for well over 100 years.  The overall aesthetic they strive for, he says, is a type of shabby-chic.  “In fashion, there’s a tradition of putting models in front of distressed, messy backdrops, of the beautiful and stylish versus decrepit walls and peeling paint,” the designer explains.  So when Holmes and Watson spontaneously spread out on the floor to create one of his physical crime scene models –with Miller and Liu, of course, providing the physical beauty – they’re leaning on a parquet pattern which is actually 1’-by-1’ self-stick tiles Bernard has aged by beating them with chains.

The team spent considerable time on the treatment of floors and walls, deliberately cracking their plaster and
creating effects like remnant wallpaper paste with mottled paint.  “The unfinished effect is certainly interesting, and it can be done with the right craftspeople.  It can look dirty but not be dirty,” Bernard explains.  “It’s all done with paint,” he notes, by people who, like Holmes, have spent years perfecting their craft.

Dusting For Clues:

To say something special, add your own character, Bernard advises. “Reflect your own interests, as opposed to hiring someone to decorate based on the latest style.”  Here is what Sherlock Holmes’s possessions reveal about their owner – along with tips on how to solve your own space.

"Red is one of our accent colors on the show," Bernard explains.  "We try to keep the color palette fairly muted, to let Holmes and Watson stand out -- but then we'll have a little accent, like in Holmes's tie or a particular piece of furniture.  Bernard found this particular turn-of-the-century mauve settee for under
Holmes' stairs on Craigslist.

“Christopher Reiter is a New York artist who makes these lamps out of paper.  We rented this one for the pilot, and then had to have it back for the series because it’s so distinctive,” Bernard says.  “It has an organic quality that matches Sherlock’s interest in nature – and we get many requests asking where it came from.”  (muleh.com)Ceramic phrenology skulls were popular in the Victorian era, and can still be found in many thrift shops. This one is plastic, its skull whacked in with a bat as part of one of Sherlock’s experiments.  He then named it Angus – “it’s become a kind of mascot for him,” Bernard explains.

Brown leather pouf.  “I like that this can be moved around,
 so that it suits whatever Holmes is up to,” Bernard explains.

Brown leather club chair from Restoration Hardware.  It comes already weathered –
 “but then we ‘scenic-ed’ it a bit more to show more wear.”

“Another theme of our show is the old versus the new, Sherlock with his Victorian roots being in present day,” Bernard explains. “So we mixed a lot of modern furniture into this 19^th Century brownstone.”  Here, a white cloth midcentury Saarinen armchair from Brooklyn thrift store Two Jakes.

"This green lacquer cabinet provides another pop of color,”
 Bernard says of this Haller customizable media cabinet by USM

“We found an artist who makes these ballistics displays,” Bernard says,
 “and it was not only decorative, but perfect for Sherlock,
 who has to know about every type of bullet.”

This supposedly surviving blue and gold wallpaper looks ‘20s,
but it’s actually a modern reproduction from Astek in Los Angeles.
  “We liked the bit of reflection from its gold dots.
  The pattern’s not overwhelming, but yet it makes a statement,” Bernard explains.
(astekwallcovering.com)

Rob Doherty’s pilot script described this collage of locks of all shapes, sizes and origins, “which Sherlock uses almost as a meditative exercise,” Bernard explains.  “It’s a way to for him to gather his thoughts and practice his lock-picking skills.”  Now, as a piece of wall art, it’s become one of the show’s most famous visuals, and was requested for display along with other Elementary props at the "The International Exhibition of Sherlock Holmes." (That traveling show debuted at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) in Portland, OR in October, 2013 and will next be at COSI in Columbus, OH from Feb 6 to Sept. 8, 2014.)

Fall Preview: CBS' Elementary

Elementary stars Lucy Liu and
Jonny Lee Miller

When producer Carl Beverly first posed the idea to Rob Doherty of transplanting Sherlock Holmes to present-day New York, the writer’s response was Elementary.

“I daresay Sherlock is the most popular character in literary pop culture from the last 100 years,” enthuses 

Doherty; perhaps that’s why there have been so many prior filmic depictions of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s prototypical detective.  Doherty says it was “one of the wonderful little details that Doyle crafted a very long time ago” that became the key to Elementary, his new CBS series adaptation starring Jonny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu.  The 19^th Century Holmes was famously addicted to opiates, “and that’s the way I’ve always looked at him, as an addict,” the writer explains – and not just to drugs.  “He’s driven by and very much addicted to what he does for a living.  He enjoys unfolding the origami of a crime, matching wits with someone who thinks he’s smart enough to get away with something horrible, and bringing that person to justice.”

Yes, this new Holmes does have a literal addiction to deal with, too.  Having just returned from rehab – a vanishing he explained to his local police contact, Captain Toby Gregson (Aidan Quinn), as a holiday in his native London – the hyper-observant detective “was previously used to being so ahead of everyone, and oozed confidence,” Doherty says.  “Now he’s left rattled, concerned that he may not be what he used to.  I liked the idea of a person like him feeling a little bit of doubt for the first time.”

That’s where Lucy Liu’s Dr. Joan Watson comes in.  As a former surgeon haunted by her role in the death of a patient, Watson has now gone into business as a sober companion, hired by Holmes’ concerned dad to keep him in line.  That means accompanying him everywhere, where the new duo finds that “as a doctor, obviously she has many skills in forensic science,” Miller says.  “So Holmes begins to realize that she’s not just a companion, but she’s very useful.”

It was Doherty’s innovation both to alter this Watson’s occupation and to make Watson for the first time a female, who, he says, “has much of the empathy Holmes is missing.  In that way, she completes him.”  As the writer praises, Liu brings her innate strength to Watson, who needs to be able to stand up to this quirky and demanding Holmes. But it’s also their characters’ more vulnerable moments that both Miller and Liu say attracted them to Elementary.  Watson, Liu says, “is not going in with her ‘sober companion’ coat on.  I like that she’s trying to bring a certain sense of humanity and understanding to her client.”

Miller adds that “one of the things that struck me, reading [Doyle’s] books, is how colorful and funny the characters are.”  Doherty fully intends to weave that same wit into Elementary, which is why he is excited that Miller’s embodiment of Holmes exhibits “a warmth, intelligence, and a fantastic sense of humor.”

But perhaps the most important quality that both Miller and Liu are bringing to their new show is  appreciation.  In filming Elementary’s pilot, “the first time I heard Jonny say ‘Watson!’ it was a thrill to be creating that, to be part of history,” Liu reveals.  The British-born Miller feels it, too.  “There’s a reason why the Holmes stories keep being retold and redone,” he theorizes.  “People play Hamlet a lot, and always want to play Shakespeare.  Good stories and good characters come back.” 

Elementary

Premieres Thursday, September 27

10 PM Eastern / 9 PM Central

CBS