As Sandy Bond, founding partner and principal at architecture firm 3north, and his wife, Page, who owns Page Bond Gallery, continue to update their Fan home, they focus on a well-edited collection. "I want beautiful objects that have enough space so you can appreciate them," he says.
The Bonds' home is a mix of eras and styles with modern items often abutting antiques. "To have everything modern and contemporary can be sterile," says Sandy. "There are certain antique pieces that are really quite beautiful. They're decorated, but you can really set them off by having clean lines next to something ornate. One mistake people often make is feeling like they have to have everything be the same and from the same period."
Because the Bonds are always rotating the art on their walls, light is important to them. Sandy designed renovations to their town home that included knocking down walls and even cutting out portions of the floor to allow plenty of light to enter and interact with their collection throughout the day. "I love having art around. It communicates different things at different times depending on how you're feeling," he says.
Sandy's aesthetic has made a mark on Richmond: He designed some of the area's most eye-catching buildings such as The Virginia Eye Institute, Richmond Ballet building and Maymont Nature Center. In his work he often exposes the building's bones.
"[In my work] it's important that you can see structure. ... There's no attempt made to hide it," he says. "That is the aesthetic."
End Table Bond made this table of leftover pavers from his back yard. "I just thought it would make a great table, if a little heavy," he says. "In front of a house, inside, and in back is all one big area. You can pull elements from outside into the inside and sort of blur the line." Eileen Gray table "I like the simplicity of it and the fact that it's adjustable. It's just very simple and the structure is the design. There's nothing superfluous. You need every piece." Front Porches Bond's Fan front porch is an example of what he believes are important "threshold" spaces for people. "With the sequence of street/porch/inside/upstairs, you go from public to very private," he says. "The porch space is the difference between the very public and private." Cy Twombly 1993 Lithographs "It's very layered with history and meaning. We had lunch with him once and he's just this interesting character. [His Lexington house] was filled with sculpture he'd been working on." Oar Lock from a Gondola "We went to the gondola shop in Venice about 25 years ago and saw them making oar locks ... It's a functional shape that's really quite beautiful in its own right. We were on our honeymoon, and it sort of reminds us of that." Richard Carlyon Painting "It's called ‘Hidden Masked Unseen,' and those are the words in it, but you never quite see it all at once. Your eyes need to really get into it." The Anderson Gallery is planning a retrospective of this former VCU professor's work in September. Eero Saarinen Womb Chair "It's just the most comfortable chair you've ever been in ... Red was the original color that Saarinen made the chair in."
Bond's Architecture
Richmond Ballet Building "When I started that job, Stoner Winslett [artistic director of the Ballet] said, ‘We want a ballet factory. We're artists, we work. We don't want a prissy place.' I thought that was just perfect." Page Bond Gallery Bond designed his wife's contemporary art gallery on Main Street. "It is very spare in its design. It's designed so the space itself is a background for the art." Robins Nature & Visitor Center at Maymont "It was actually designed around the exhibit — the exhibit is about the river, the fall line, that's where Richmond is located — and we stepped the building down [the hill] to reflect that. So the building echoes the fall of the river."
