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Mister Pell's Christmas Kaleidoscope

This top designer turns his Mount Helix home over to the holiday spirit, tree by tree.

Harold Pell loves the holidays. It’s the season when this highly acclaimed interior designer has fun by decorating his Mount Helix home with a minimum of six Christmas trees.

“My secret to decorating for the holidays is very simple,” says Pell, ASID, owner of Pell Interiors. “If any part of the Christmas tree is showing, then you haven’t done enough.”

This former San Diego chapter ASID president, who divides his professional practice among San Diego, the Midwest and East Coast, doesn’t stop with decorating trees; every inch of his contemporary home is his canvas. “This is my time to release,” he says. “All year, I’m negotiating with my clients. At Christmas, I take a break and decorate to please myself and my partner, Terry Bairrington.”

But Bairrington is the first to suggest the holidays are like a Broadway production for Pell. “Each year he does something even more creative,” Bairrington says. “It’s a treat to watch him put a new spin on something traditional, or take a completely new approach.”

For example, this year Pell found a pair of rather large decorative stone lions in a Chicago-area salvage yard and had them trucked west in time for the holidays. “Leo” and “Kristof” now occupy a place of Christmas reverence outside the entry.

“It was just the touch we needed. Having the lions covered in [fake] snow and garlands is purely festive,” Pell says. “Plus, I saved them from the same gravel-pit fate as Jimmy Hoffa.”

The designer’s love for the holidays stretches back to his childhood in Iowa’s farmlands, where his family celebrated by riding a horse-drawn sleigh across the fields to their grandmother’s house for Christmas Eve. “Is that the corni­est?” Pell says. “But it’s so true.”

Pell believes decorating should be fun and reflect family treasures and meaningful items that have become a part of holiday traditions over the years. “Most of the decorations on my trees today are one-of-a-kind mementos from when I was growing up,” he says. “I always find a spot on my trees for a few sleigh bells, photos and special pieces of jewelry from family members and relatives.”

Pell also insists few, if any, of his tree ornaments are items he has purchased. “My clients and friends know the perfect gift for me is a creative dollop of something that I can hang on a tree,” he says, “and the more dollops, the better.”

At the entry to his home, beyond the overflow of gifts left behind by Santa, stands Pell’s hallmark tree. “I like to have this tree set the tone and give guests a small sample of what they’re in for throughout the remainder of the house,” he says. To ensure no one misses it, Pell strung 1,800 lights on the tree. He also aimed low-voltage lighting on the ceiling toward the treetop angel that has been in his family “since the Earth cooled.”

Also on the signature tree is a community of mice made from English walnuts, dressed as Mr. and Mrs. Claus. “One of my fondest memories involves good friends of Dad’s and Mom’s helping me make them,” Pell says. “Ed was a finish carpenter, and he would make the frames for my artwork and paintings in high school art class. He carefully cut all the English walnuts in half and cleaned them. Then his wife, Eleanor, and I made the eyes, noses, whiskers and hats for them. I store them in a special box, and they have visited our Christmas tree every year since.”

Pell says he doesn’t organize his decorating into themes. “‘Organized’ isn’t quite the word that would describe how I decorate. It’s more like controlled chaos. You can’t orchestrate joy. It just happens.”

For Pell and Bairrington, the holidays are a celebration of tradition, history and the making of new memories and traditions. “It’s like many of the interiors I design for clients,” Pell says. “Everything can be in place, all finely designed and scaled with great finishes, textures and art. But there should be personal items that reflect the clients and their families. Without the personal items in our Christmas decorating, walking through our home could be like walking through any overdone floral-supply warehouse. It may be great for living out most fantasies, but the sense of tradition and history would be lost and forgotten.”

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