Afternoon Delight
Interior decorator Joe Minton transforms his Fort Worth home into a glorious garden party for life-long friend Martha Hyder and guests.
 |
| FRIENDS: Joe Minton and Nita Carol Miskovitch. |
Interior decorator Joe Minton and philanthropist Martha Hyder grew up together in Fort Worth, traveling the world with an international crowd of friends, such as Desmond Guinness, son of Diana Mitford Mosely and founder of the Irish Georgian Society, a foundation dedicated to preserving period Georgian houses. Architecture and interior design has always been a binding force between Hyder and Minton. Hyder, a past president of the Van Cliburn piano competition, became known for her talent for locating fine-yet-dilapidated old houses and transforming them into showplaces. Minton, of course, often helped with the interiors. The two longtime friends recently teamed up again, this time for a garden party at Minton’s Westover Hills home, a renovated 1940s Georgian (what else?). The luncheon was held in honor of Hyder’s granddaughter, Lili, who recently made her debut at the
 |
| GREETING: Martha Hyder greets Phyllis Rowan. |
Assembly Ball in Fort Worth. About 100 friends were there, most of them out-of-town guests who’d come for a dinner dance for Lili the night before at her grandmother’s house. Minton erected two large white tents to shade the back terraces, lush with fig trees and flowering pink oleander, and set up tables draped in white cotton piqué. The food was a simple summer feast of figs from the garden, asparagus, tomatoes, snow peas, mozzarella, basil, warm quiche lorraine, and cold chicken salad. Colorful rutabaga, Swiss chard, and fragrant rosemary and mint plucked right out of the front yard decorated the serving tables. Fort Worth-based Feastivities catered. As centerpieces, Minton set out antique Persian pots and small 18th-century French stoves, which Rick Rasnick of Thistles and Tumbleweed filled with white lilies, white roses, blue agapanthus, and blue delphinium. Hyder, armed with a small digital camera, spent the afternoon table-hopping and shooting
 |
| HAVING FUN: Matthew and Amy Hyder enjoy the soirée. |
candids of her friends. Among them were San Antonio socialites Linda Seeligson and her daughter Julianna; Nita Carol Miskovitch from Paris, who married famous ballet star Milorad Miskovitch; Laura Tull, a Fort Worth native and one of the original Dixie Chicks; interior decorators Forrest Stevens and Ken Blasingame, who worked on the Bushes’ Crawford ranch; and Patsy Yturria Kimbro, an old Irish Georgian Society pal from San Antonio.
