San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Designers give show house Texas appeal.
The renowned Kips Bay Decorator Show House has expanded to Texas, with its first-ever project in Dallas now through Oct. 25.
For nearly 50 years, a decorator show house in New York City has raised more than $25 million for the Kips Bay Boys & Girls Club of New York. The inaugural Dallas show home also will raise money for Dwell with Dignity, a nonprofit that provides home décor for families struggling with poverty, and the Crystal Charity Ball, a Dallas nonprofit that supports children’s charities.
Some 27 design firms, most of them Texas-based, worked on the more than 11,000square-foot Provincial-style home onWoodland Drive in the historicWoodland Estates neighborhood of Old Preston Hollow in Dallas. The show house project expanded to Palm Beach, Fla., three years ago, and to Dallas this year.
Dallas may sound like a long way to go for a show home, but this one is worth the drive. If show homes give you ideas for your own, the Kips Bay project in Dallas might be the equivalent of a decade’s worth of shelter magazines. You’ll see wallcoverings, gorgeous lighting and furnishings that range from antiques to modern.
San Antonio-based Melissa Morgan’s M Interiors design firm is one of the many Texas companies participating, creating a beautiful downstairs landing and back staircase.
Preston Hollow was developed with country-style houses in what was then the outskirts of Dallas in the 1920s with homes for doctors, lawyers, oilmen and entrepreneurs. That neighborhood has been the home of President GeorgeW. Bush and first lady Laura Bush, energy tycoon T. Boone Pickens, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and pro golfer Jordan Spieth.
Rottet Studio created a grand entrance to the home, with custom-designed wallpaper and rugs, as well as sconces that founder Lauren Rottet designed for Circa Lighting. When she couldn’t find a bench she wanted, she designed one, and the as-yetunnamed bench will likely be part of her studio’s next furniture collection.
Her wallpaper — manufactured by Trove — gives the effect of entering a forest, with the color starting light and getting darker as you go deeper in the room. A grouping of three rugs, shaped like magnolia blossoms, nest on the floor — designed by Rottet andmade by rug whisperer Kyle Bunting.
“You come in and the trees get darker, and you think, ‘Do I take the path to the right, the path ahead or the path to the left?’ It goes from very light to darker, and when you leave, it’s as if you’ve come back to the edge of the forest and can see the sun again,” Rottet said. “It’s so different for us, but I wanted it to feel whimsical as if you were still outside.”
Whimsy comes in art, especially Page Kempner’s cast-bronze pieces that look like foliage crawling up the wall and three-dimensional wire birds affixed to the wall, the work of Helen Altman. Both artists are represented by Moody Gallery.
Morgan approached the back stairs and downstairs landing as if it was the best room in the house. She applied Gracie wallpaper — a chinoiserie floral on an emerald background — and created a cozy seating area in a small niche.
Dallas-based Jan Showers’ ladies study has a “What would Jackie O like?” feel to it, with light blue lacquered walls, a gold silk sofa and contemporary art. Designer Mark D. Sikes stuck to his signature blue and white in the living room, applying Delft blue wallpaper and using several pieces of furniture from his spring line with Chaddock. He collaborated with potter and lamp-maker Christopher Spitzmiller on wall brackets and lamps with a basket-weave pattern.
The gigantic primary bedroom, designed by Kirsten Kelli, holds a sofa and several pairs of chairs, and the adjoining primary bathroom might be the star of the whole show. It’s an octagon-shaped room that Doniphan Moore Interiors bathed in custom de Gournay wallpaper with a pewter background and floral design that extends onto embroidered window shades by the Shade Store.
Moore also did the adjoining coffee bar and closets, and the ladies closet is so sumptuous youmight want to change your clothes several times a day just to spend more time in it.
Kevin Spearman Design Group drew the veranda, and Spearman organized the space as if it was an extension of the indoors, with comfortable sofas and interesting vintage or vintage-inspired cane chairs on a Moroccan rugmade of reed and leather. He borrowed some pieces, including a beautiful coffee table, from the M Naeve antiques store in Houston.
Margaret Naeve Parker, who owns M Naeve, outfitted the home’s gallery — actually a wide center hall — with art, interesting lighting and just a few pieces of furniture.
Mother-son duo Viviano Viviano — Catherine and Michael Viviano — filled the generous family room with two seating areas. This is a country-style home, so they took an English/European approach with furniture — including a pair of Hans Wegner Papa Bear chairs from Sputnik Modern in Dallas. They applied wainscoting painted a deep, dark green two-thirds of the way up the walls so the room wouldn’t feel overwhelming.
Lauren Hudson and her team at Wells Design decorated a guest room with a canopy bed upholstered with and draped in a Rose Cumming chintz and walls covered in custom-colored Namay Samay fabric. Hudson packs a lot of personality into the room in a classic but subtle way.
Marcus Mohon, who grew up in Orange and has offices in Austin and Houston, decorated the oversize breakfast/ keeping room with a casual dining area with a settee, chairs and amarble table at one end and a setting more like a family room at the other.
Save one room for last — Michelle Nussbaumer’s “Daughter’s Bedroom,” an upstairs space that speaks of the designer’s penchant for exotic travel. She takes you to Turkey, Morocco and elsewhere with fabrics, wallpaper and furniture.
“This room had no architectural interest, so I created it. Sometimes working in confined parameters brings out creativity,” Nussbaumer said. “I was able tomake lemonade out of lemons. I couldn’t have had a better room.”