We Live Here
Anne Crawford and Dudley DeZonia embrace Ojai
Anne Crawford and Dudley DeZonia at their historic home in Ojai. Caftan by Rick Owens.
Written by Lorie Dewhirst Porter
Photographs by Dewey Nicks
The historic Ojai residence of Anne Crawford and Dudley DeZonia is chock-full of fascinating objects, but one small watercolor painting sums it all up: artist Ed Ruscha’s depiction of an Ojai sunset emblazoned with the words WE LIVE HERE in all caps. “Every day we look at that and just pinch ourselves,” Crawford says. “We are so enjoying our lives here.” Their two-story wood-frame building, constructed in 1910, is surrounded by 20 acres of oak, avocado, and citrus trees and features a generous wraparound porch with a drop-dead panoramic western view of the Ojai Valley. “The porch hooked me,” says DeZonia, who first viewed the property in 2019 after Crawford, a self-described hunter-gatherer, discovered it online.
Equally urban and urbane, Crawford and DeZonia are both fifth-generation Californians. Crawford grew up in Santa Monica; DeZonia in Whittier. They were introduced in 2000 by fashion icon Michèle Lamy at Les Deux Café, Lamy’s ultrahip L.A. boîte. DeZonia was a successful entrepreneur and widower with a young son, and Crawford was consulting for luxury brands like Roger Vivier Paris and, later, Rick Owens, following stints at LA Style, Los Angeles Magazine, and Town & Country. The match was meant to be. They married and moved into a distinctive Roland Coate–designed home in Hancock Park, which became ground zero for movie-industry stylists gathering annual Oscar outfits and accessories for their celebrity clients. The couple’s move to Ojai nearly two decades later coincided with the sale of DeZonia’s business. Crawford also had fond memories of attending summer school at Ojai Valley School, and close friends—designer Paul Fortune and his husband, ceramicist Chris Brock—had relocated from L.A. to Ojai several years earlier.
For the Ojai house, Crawford and DeZonia enlisted architect Odom Stamps of Pasadena’s Stamps & Stamps to renovate the kitchen, adding a breakfast room, wine room, laundry, pantry, and closet. (“The important things in life,” Crawford says.) Leland Walmsley of everGREEN Landscape Architects reimagined the garden, adding a swimming pool and native sycamore and oak trees, changes that required installing a quarry with a conveyor belt to break up the numerous rocks on the property. “Dudley and I had just come back from Egypt, and we pulled into the driveway, and there were two giant [gravel] pyramids in our driveway,” Crawford says.
“They are totally committed to living life to the fullest with graciousness and gratitude.”
To reinvigorate the interiors, the couple chose designer Rodman Primack. This was no accident. Years earlier Crawford and DeZonia had hired Primack for their Hancock Park home; in fact, they were Primack’s first interior design clients. Since that time the designer and his husband, Rudy Weissenberg, formed AGO Interiors, which has become a global design firm with clients in the United States, Europe, and Latin America. Primack was thrilled to work with his former clients again. “They are totally committed to living life to the fullest with graciousness and gratitude,” he says, likening them to the couple Nick and Nora Charles of the 1930s Thin Man film series.
Primack’s interiors often include site-specific art commissions, and the Ojai house is no exception. The primary bedroom boasts a fireplace surround and sconces by Francesca DiMattio, a New York contemporary artist noted for her ceramic sculpture. “I like to give artists lots of leeway,” Primack says, adding that Crawford and DeZonia share a similar view, encouraging artists to create without restraints. DiMattio was also responsible for the dining room’s graceful chandelier, an intricately detailed counterpoint to the sleek Hans Wegner wooden dining table and George Nakashima’s minimalist wooden chairs.
“One of our goals together is that nothing is too precious. So we’ve tried to make that our motto.”
Crawford’s innate talent for sourcing and collecting is evident throughout. For the living room, Crawford found two identical vintage T. H. Robsjohn-Gibbings sofas and had them re-covered in a brilliant green wide-wale corduroy from Dries Van Noten. The creamy paneled walls of the breakfast room are overlaid with Italian trompe l’oeil ceramic plates of all sizes and colors that she has collected over 30 years. “I had never assembled them together on one wall,” Crawford says. “We were kind of flabbergasted at how many we had.” In the adjacent kitchen, the Lacanche Citeaux range is surrounded by antique blue-and-white Delft tiles mixed with custom tiles depicting the family dogs (Archie, Bailey, Lady, Hugo, and Primack’s dog Chapo) by ceramicist Aviva Halter. “We laid out the tiles on the floor and chose the patterns and order before installing them,” Crawford says.
In the end, Crawford and DeZonia’s Ojai home is a visual portrait, a fascinating reflection of the couple’s shared existence. “One of our goals in all the homes we’ve lived in together is that nothing is too precious,” Crawford says. “We want our lives to be totally at ease, and we want it to project that. So we’ve tried to make that our motto. We’re just really lucky.”
