Timber & Stone: Designer Victoria Sass Puts a Modern Spin on a Rustic Log Cabin Getaway

Designer Victoria Sass met the empty-nesters who bought a 1950s log cabin, thanks to the couple’s adult children, who are clients of Sass’ Minneapolis design firm, Project Refuge Studio.

The 1,850-square-foot cabin, which is on one of Minnesota’s many lakes, has two bedrooms and two bathrooms. More importantly, the cabin sits in the middle of what has become a multigenerational lakeside compound for the extended family. The owners loved the location but tasked Sass with modernizing the kitchen and bathrooms and refreshing the interior; they didn’t need it bigger, just updated and easy.

“My clients have contemporary taste and like things clean and modern,” Sass says. “The log cabin felt a little bit at odds with that.” For every project, Sass finds a “totem,” which she describes as a symbol from the natural world that guides her design decisions. “A raven just kept coming up for us,” she says. “It has poise and presence; it’s also very streamlined. It has one color and it’s very sculptural.”

Using the raven as the project’s aesthetic guide gave Sass guidance on how to create a dialogue between the new and old. The kitchen is a brilliant example. In contrast to the rustic logs, she chose black for the appliances and cabinets. For the waterfall counters and backsplash, she used Cambria’s Delamere quartz design in a polished finish that echoes a raven’s glossy feathers. “The trend in stone right now is honed, which people like because it’s casual and relaxed, but we went with polished,” she says. “That’s why a totem is so helpful when you’re making a nontraditional choice. You know it’s the right thing because you can refer back to the totem.” She also notes that the polished finish brings depth to the quartz and highlights the veining. 

Elsewhere in the house, Sass moved some non-log walls to create better flow for the entrance and the lower level guest room and den. Into the primarily square rooms, she used furnishings to add modern, organic shapes and softness to the mix. She started with existing pieces that the family had and then added contemporary furnishings to give a feeling of history and collection. “Cabins are often an amalgamated mix of things from past lives,” she says. “Our goal was to make the space feel easy.”

In the primary bedroom and bathroom, the colors are lighter and reflect the natural world, perhaps the raven’s environment. Sass chose Cambria’s Fairbourne™ with a chiseled edge for the primary bath’s counters and then echoed the wood elsewhere in the home with wood cabinets. In the primary bedroom, art by Minneapolis-based artist Tia Keobounpheng was an easy choice for Sass. “Art is the one place where you can step outside the bounds and shake things up,” she says. “It stands out because if everything else is the raven, this art is the rainbow.”

Sass also believes in celebrating her roots in the Midwest and Minnesota through her work. “I’m the biggest proponent of exporting the values and culture of the Midwest,” she says. “It’s really exciting to me when artists are recognized on a national scale, but they choose to live and work here.”

The one thing that isn’t in the house is a depiction of an actual raven. Sass laughs when she explains that there are no raven pillows or tchotchkes. “We really try to not be too literal about our totems,” she explains. “I don’t want anyone to walk in and be like, ‘Wow, these people really like birds.’”

Read this article as it appears in the magazine.