BEAUTY: Interior--Joseph Pabst

Joseph Pabst, the great-great-grandson of Capt. Frederick Pabst, founder of Pabst Brewing Co., grew up in Arizona but returned to his family roots in Milwaukee fourteen years ago. Five years ago, he bought a grand, 5,000 square foot 1929 Georgian-style home and presided over a two-year renovation that made it totally his own. Pabst obviously has a finely honed sense of design; he has created a fascinating style, mixing traditional and contemporary pieces, juxtaposing classic tones with bold, saturated colors, and using spaces in interesting ways (see his purple dining room, fifth photo below). He is also clearly adept at the art of tableau, something I personally believe in and practice (see photos 3, 4, 9, and 10).

In an interview for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Pabst, who hosts in his home many fundraisers for LGBT causes, said, "I like strong color, and I think the reason for that is that I grew up in households of painfully good taste: cream-colored walls, cream-colored upholstery. The color in a room was simply the art or a rug. The way I live now has a direct correlation to that, where I swung to the opposite end of the spectrum. I love saturated color."

Of this fantastic painting, above, Pabst says,"The painting in my dressing room, [is] by Louise Lemp Pabst - she's my great-aunt. The subject was a Paris model. It's just a marvelous piece. She studied art in the U.S. and Paris. She did this portrait in the late 1920s, and she won an award for it in Paris."