Dear Reader
The real Texas eluded me…
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until I first saw my mother-in-law’s dining room wall, which is lined with the artwork of Merritt Mauzey. Up to that point, I knew something about Dallas and a little about Texas, but nothing about Merritt Mauzey. Mauzey’s lithographs and drawings depict 1930s Texas cotton farmers amidst barns and trucks and other farm equipment. One might dismiss them as quaint were they not so brutally plain.
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Most outsiders think of Texans as prone to glamour and excess, and there is a certain amount of truth to that. But the real Texas lies in that paradoxical place where a lady such as my mother-in-law Jenny Lea, who surrounds herself with antiques and silver and books, treasures most her drawings of dirt farmers and trucks. It’s a place where the late Patsy Lacy Griffith, who lived in a $7 million art deco Turtle Creek high-rise, served turnip greens and black-eyed peas to guests dressed in couture. Real Texans, no matter how cultivated, are irrevocably tied to the land.
Our look at Texas style shows three local homes that manifest our region and its history in design and dcor. They aren’t Texas theme parks filled with a glut of Lone Stars, wagon wheels, and neckerchiefs, but homes where a sense of Texas history and an understanding of place dominate.
In a time when we are re-imagining the idea of homeland, the real Texas is complex and seductive, whether you’re a newcomer or fourth-generation Texan like my dear mother-in-law Jenny Lea.
Enjoy this issue of D Home, and let me hear from you. I truly enjoy your e-mails.
Cordially,
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Christine Allison
[email protected]
