Don't Give It Up -- This Couple Proves That You Can Keep The Things You Love Even In Small Spaces

CUTLINE: LEFT - THE DEN/PIANO ROOM, AN AMISH SUGAR CUPBOARD, CIRCA 1870, OVERFLOWS WITH TURN-OF-THE-CENTURY CERAMICS FROM ENGLAND, FRANCE AND THE UNITED STATES THAT HONOR THE APARTMENT'S ART NOUVEAU AESTHETIC.

CUTLINE: ABOVE - A BRASS BED WITH A FLORAL PRINT TIES IN WITH FLORAL CERAMICS, BRONZE FIGURES AND LAMPS THROUGHOUT THE HOME.

RIGHT - ORIGINAL ARTWORK FOR A POSTER OF THE 1904 PRODUCTION OF ``PETER PAN'' HANGS OVER THE ROLL-TOP DESK.

How do you move from a gracious, spacious California Colonial mansion, a 2,500-square-foot dwelling set in a verdant canyon, into a cut-up, cozy 800-square-foot Art Nouveau apartment among shops on a crowded Seattle hilltop?

It takes some lip-chewing, lots of thought and seemingly endless, trial-and-error bouts of moving furniture and collectibles.

Finally, after several years, screenwriter Stewart Stern and choreographer Marilee Stiles Stern got it right. By prudent choice and placement of objects, by featuring singular antiques and objects, they have been able to retain and play up nearly every one of their original furnishings while letting the old-world charm, Craftsman bones and cheerful, leaded windows of their bungalow-style rooms stand out.

What sold them on the place, despite its confining size, was a nearby, two-room office ``suite'' in the same style as the apartment, part of the same late-1920s, two-story building and included in the 800 square feet.

Stern put his huge old oak roll-top desk, the survivor of a fire but since restored, between two floor-to-ceiling bookcases in the main work room, which is entered via a leaded-glass door in the open hallway. A large antique table for drawings, paper collating and storyboards sits behind it, against the big window in an alcove with wing chairs for musing and snoozing. Mementoes of a past accented by stage and film friends, and items suggesting summers on an uncle's New York farm, rest on tabletops or on the white-painted walls.

Brass lamps with cream or amber shades in rounded, organic shapes add a soft glow and antique shine to the quarters.

In the main apartment, whose only contemporary touch - for convenience and visual relief - is a modernized kitchen in white cabinetry with bleached oak floors - the mood becomes more colorful. Even exuberant, matching the nature-formed, Nouveau Majolica holloware overflowing every cranny.

The tiled foyer, with its stained-glass window, features a big, red-and-blue wooden carousel rooster angled in one corner, a Victorian rocker in another, and a commode tucked beside the door to receive the odd hat, book or parcel. Visible ahead, through a doorway, is a diminutive den with two small chairs, upright piano (``The Duchess,'' for her proud carriage), a low table on wire legs and a turquoise-painted Amish sugar cupboard spilling over with pastel English, French and American Art Nouveau pottery in leaf and flower designs.

This angling of furniture, of choosing slim, upright or corner pieces or items with ``light-looking'' legs, and curving or surface-interest contours, keeps the mood light despite the mass of some furnishings. An added boost to openness is curtain-free windows, wall sconces and airy chandeliers - even recessed can lighting, in the kitchen.

The living room, 12 by 16 feet, contains a sofa and two chairs upholstered in floral print, a massive coffee table in the center, a terra-cotta fireplace surround set into a wall of mirrors to give the appearance of doubling the room's size, a folding desk and another floor-length mirror on the entry wall.

Leaded windows on each side of the room and floral touches on ceramics, upholstery and petite-pointed kindling boxes make the room appear part of the outside courtyard, with its mature rhododendrons and azaleas.

The dining room, with its Persian rug, distressed-wood table, cupboard and grandfather clock in one corner, comfortably seats eight persons, overseen by ersatz ``ancestor''

paintings found in an Ohio attic.

Up narrow stairs are two bedrooms and a bath. The couple furnished the master bedroom with a big brass bed, flower-print coverings and side tables with glowing brass lamps and bronze figures. They put a smaller bed in the dormered spare room, along with a Victorian chest whose stain was swirled around with corn husks to impart a burled-walnutlike finish.

The placement of such singular pieces invites close inspection: The eye dwells on details, expanding the sense of space and time.

As Stern says, ``Yes, it's cozy. But there's all that city out there!''

CAROLE BEERS IS A COLUMNIST AND REPORTER FOR THE SEATTLE TIMES ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT SECTION. RICHARD S. HEYZA IS A TIMES STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER.