Grace notes
New features added to vintage Symphony Show House fundraiser
Seventy years and 45 symphony show houses later, the Oklahoma City Orchestra League still can pull its share of new moves. For one, visitors to the league’s 2018 Symphony Show House won’t necessarily have to wait to take their treasures home.
As always, almost every item in the house will be for sale, and there will be plenty of boutique shopping in the home’s three-car garage, as well.
But this year designers also will offer handpicked items through Elegant Enhancements, a designer consignment boutique set up in the library with outposts scattered throughout the house.
“So if you see a pillow that you like, there might be one like it in (the consignment boutique),” said Joan Bryant, symphony house publicity chairman, running a hand across an invitingly furry pillow in a downstairs sun
room. “You can buy this one, but you can’t take it home until the show house is over. But the things in there (in the consignment boutique), if you see something you like, you can buy it, put it under your arm and leave with it.”
The 2018 Symphony Show House, 3115 Dutch Forest Lane continues through May 20, open from noon to 5 p.m. Sunday; 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday; and from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday.
There is no parking at the Show House or in the neighborhood. Express Employment Professionals will provide a complementary shuttle from 3000 E Memorial Road, on the southeast corner of Memorial and Bryant Avenue. Look for the Symphony Show House shuttle sign.
Tickets are $20 each at the door, and ages 12 and under get in free. Judy Austin and Jane Krizer are co-chairmen, and proceeds fund the orchestra league’s educational programs. For more information, go to www.okcorchestraleague.org and click on “events” in the menu.
The extended hours are also new this year, said Lisa Reed, the orchestra league’s executive director.
“It’s for those professionals who might be working until 5 o’clock. They can still swing by and enjoy their evening at the Symphony Show House.”
It also helps the league avoid scheduling conflicts with graduations and other end-of-school activities that crop up on Saturdays in May.
And for the first time, all children are welcome after years of allowing only those ages 8 and up. “We still ask that there be no strollers,” Bryant said. “But a babe in arms is welcome.”
The league will, weather permitting, bring in its Orchestra Playground for children on May 12 and May 19, giving them a chance to handle and play musical instruments ranging from the violin to the French horn to the trumpet.
This year’s Show House is in the Dutch Forest neighborhood in a heavily wooded area northeast of Bryant Avenue and NE 122.
The 6,145-squarefoot European-style home was built in 1994 and sits on 1.67 acres. It is listed for sale for $700,000 with Laura Robertson, of Keller Williams Realty Central Oklahoma in Edmond.
It features a large kitchen with a fiveburner commercial range, several distinct living areas, a guest suite and a master’s suite downstairs — both with their own patio areas — plus other bedrooms, a library and more upstairs.
All in all, it offers four bedrooms, four full baths and three half baths plus a three-car garage.
‘Very livable’
League Show Houses have run the gamut over the years from Greek Revival to French Country to contemporary.
They have each offered chances and challenges to the 30 or so designers who descend on the houses each spring to work their collective magic. They each also exude their own character, and even with its open design, the Dutch Forest home has an air of coziness with its wood built-ins and secluded nooks.
“I feel like this one is very livable,” Bryant said. “You just feel like you could probably move in — or you’d like to.”
Sharp-eyed visitors will notice small things — the way, for example, circles are repeated across the front rooms in mirrors and wall fixtures, even though different designers worked on each without collaborating.
Reed said it’s because the designers are all at the top of their game, and know what’s trending.
“This year we’re seeing a lot of agates and geodes,” she said. “You can find rocks and glass and metal in almost everyone’s room. It’s just so nice how it flows through the house and makes it cohesive even though each designer has their own individual style.”