Tour This Home Product Designer's Maximalist Minneapolis Abode

Creator behind Warmhouse Story, atmospherist and former Director of Home Product Design at Target Corporation, Jason Berke fills his home with warm intention, friends' eclectic artwork and quirky stories fit for hours of entertaining. “I think of myself as this weird mix of Willy Wonka, Martha Stewart and Oscar Wilde if they had a baby together,” Jason says with a laugh. “I’m a little left of center, and I like to do things that are driven by imagination and creativity.”

“Whenever people walk in, the first thing they notice is the kitchen,” Jason says. “We designed our kitchen to emulate a pre-war apartment in New York ... and we had these hutches designed specially [with] some really great details, like this fluting on the side. We wanted really nice open spaces and wanted lighting within so we could highlight all of our great pieces.”

“In a kitchen that has a lot of glass and a lot of white, bringing color in is one way to help people really see the differences of what you have in your cabinets,” Jason says. “So I’ve done it in a few ways — one way is by using flowers, which are really important to me. Here I’ve dried some roses, strawflower and little leaves, bringing in just a little bit of green and a little bit of pink into the kitchen for spring."

“I refer to [my] style as classic maximalist,” Jason says. “So it’s taking classic design or historic design, and putting that on top of things on things on things. It really fills my cup in terms of what I love about history and the origin of things.”

One of two house cats share the space with Jason and his partner, Chad. “Franklin is the troublemaker of the house,” Jason says. “And if there’s anything that he’s not supposed to be in or anywhere he’s not supposed to be, that’s where he shows up.”

“Having one big open space can make for difficult arranging when you’re thinking about how to set up your home,” Jason says. “For us, this dining room was particularly interesting because we don’t do a lot of sit-down dining on our own.”

From the dining room to the living room, one particuluar feature in Jason's home is reserved for his prized possessions. “Your sofa and your tables, those things go through what a friend of mine calls 'the patina of life,’” Jason recalls. “They just get schmutz on ‘em,” he says with a laugh. "They get messed up and they’re things and they can be replaced — but in our home, you don’t touch the walls. Those things are cherished.”

That's because Jason is all about a good gallery wall to showcase his favorite nature-inspired art, vintage collections and framed DIYs. "We have some [of our] favorite artists that we’ve found on Etsy," Jason says.

And in Jason's world, a simple photograph just won't do. “I share this space with Chad, my partner of 10 years, who I love so much,” Jason says. “This painting over my shoulder is a cubist-style painting of Chad.”

“And this is a painting of my mother when she was 19-years-old and a summer camp counselor," Jason explains. "This was once a black-and-white photo that my friend Nick Bensch painted into a beautiful portrait, and we’re thrilled to have it on the wall here."

Above the painting of Jason's mom sits another painting from Nick: a reimagined portrait of Jason as a 7-year-old. "I didn’t wear glasses when I was [a] 7-year-old," Jason says. "But this is how he imagined me with my former cat Celexa, that — yes — was named after an anti-depressant.”

“Things don’t have to be perfect in your home,” Jason shares. “If you think they have to be perfect, it can be really hard to do a gallery wall. I just try to get them well spaced and level, and if I’ve done that it’s a success.”

“One of my favorite things to do is to frame dried botanicals,” Jason explains. To make a mini floral bouquet that floats inside of a vintage frame like this one you’ll need a frame that doesn’t have any kind of backing.

First, measure the total space of the frame and take a few inches off of that. Jason's antique frame is about 8’’ long, so the bouquet he creates will be 6’’ long to make space for it to float inside the frame. Gather a variety of dried flowers to design the bouquet and start by using floral snips to trim the first dried flower to size. Group other flowers around the leading flower. Then add smaller dried flowers and stems to fill in any holes in the baby bouquet.

Trim a 5'' piece of thin gauge floral wire and twist it around the stems of the bouquet until the pieces are hidden. Snip the stems so they are even at the bottom. Last, take another piece of wire and attach it to the sturdiest stem in the back and twist to make a loop for a small nail. Use a piece silk ribbon to tie a simple knot around the exposed wire. Hang the frame on the wall and place the mini bouquet in the center.

Other kitty, Fiona, approves of the new dried floral arrangment on the gallery wall. “I think having a really nice piece is fantastic even amongst all the other layers [on the wall]," Jason continues. "That’s what classic maximalism means to me — you can have layers on layers and it just builds interest and it gives people a reason to come over and look at all the details.”

Jason's living room is just as welcoming as any other room in his home and curated especially for special visits from special people. “When I think about hosting, I think about creating a moment or atmosphere for people who are coming to be with me or with me and my partner,” Jason says. “You know we all have that shelf of candles that people have given us. But I really try to take note of who gave me those candles and, if they’re going to be there that night, to put it out and light it. To me, that’s what intentional hospitality is all about.”

The living room seating is styled for company comfort and designed with Jason's favorite tried-and-true look. “Velvet is one of my very favorite fabrics,” he says. “It comes and goes in popularity but I love it all the time. It isn’t really about being serious all the time, but if you have a unifying fabric like velvet and some unifying trims like this camel color and the gold trim on the pillow, all of it works together.”

Traditional living room elements are juxtaposed with intriguing decor. “This is our prize 250-year-old whale vertebrae,” Jason explains. “We picked it up on a Sunday afternoon — as all of you do as well — and we brought it home. What’s really cool about it is that it’s a piece of natural history, but it’s also a piece of art and a really great conversation starter.”

No room for a feature wall? No problem. “My favorite spot in the home is this corner gallery wall that we have in our living room,” Jason shares. “Sometimes people don’t think about doing a gallery wall that wraps the corner, but it’s a lot of fun creatively to think about that.”

Oscar Wilde wrote about finding joy simply by looking at flowers — and Jason sets out to embrace floral beauty well beyond its natural life cycle. “I’ve got some dried roses, some peonies, some amaranth and some incredible tulip magnolia branches, which unfortunately didn’t bloom, but I still found a use for them in the long run to give some really great movement and gestures to this arrangement.”

Just beside the dried bouquet, Jason points out a favorite collectable. "This particular bowl I love, and it’s from Afghanistan," he says. "It’s been repaired many times over the years [because] it’s a really old bowl. It just reminds me that we can get more use out of things than we would really think.”

Jason's love of Martha Stewart and her motto side-steps right into his most recent design makeover. “It took us a while to figure out what color we wanted the bedroom to be, but I love green and I especially love aged green," Jason says. "And we’ve added levels of gray to the green because they actually cross [in a lot of] colorations.”

“Just like all of the other rooms, we have a gallery wall in our bedroom,” Jason says. “For this one we wanted to approach in a slightly different way. We have a very dear friend, Mary Jo Hoffman, and she’s an incredible photographer. Every day of the year she takes a beautiful picture of nature on a completely white background and we decided to tie together Mary Jo’s photos, and the subject matter of the photos, with different styles and types of art to really play that out across the whole [gallery] wall.”