Antique Mewsings
Old accessories never die. They just go to antique mails. Look long and hard enough, and you may find that very sentiment stitched on a needlepoint pillow in one of these malls. If not, you’ll find a lot of other equally cutesy, hard-to-swallow stuff-and that’s what makes The Mews a little different. It doesn’t do cute.
Instead, The Mews wants to be known as a “designer marketplace,” where Dallas interior designers and dealers of antiques, furniture and accessories have set up booths to sell their personal selections of merchandise at either wholesale or retail prices.
All things considered, the prices are good-but don’t expect any giveaways- and the standards are high. Prospective exhibitors must agree to allow owner Doris Hart (upper right) to pass muster on their wares. Hart worked as a designer in Houston and Dallas for 30 years. “Having been a designer myself, I know what a chore it is to go all over town finding the right accessories. So I wanted to have them all in one place.” explains Hart. “At the same lime I wanted to open up a source of good designer pieces to the retail trade.”
Open since last August at the corner of Market Center Boulevard and Oak Lawn-in the heart of the design district- The Mews has everything from Bonnie Stewart’s architectural antiques to East Texas twig furniture, silk Afghanistani wedding capes, wooden chairs painted and crafted by Zuni Indians and French porcelains. We even found a 19th-century carrousel mermaid on the premises.
-Derm Evans
Bag It
While working as a set designer in Los Angeles, Fort Worth native Mary Alice Palmer designed a hatbox-shaped purse for herself, made with the same hand-tooled details found on horse saddles. When a woman handed her a check for $350 in the grocery store one day for her handbag. Palmer knew she was on to something. “I said ’Give me six months and I’ll send you one.’ ” Now, four years later, the Mary Alice Palmer line Includes four different versions of her original design, plus more than 20 other styles of handbags, wallets and leather goods. Palmer, 30, designs the bags out of a tiny office in her Oak Lawn apartment; then they’re assembled and hand-tooled in Fort Worth. “There are always people who will buy Western,” says Palmer. “It’s part of our heritage.” Her collection Es available in Dallas at Ann Hartley and Stanley Korshak. -Ellise Pierce
Related Articles
Arts & Entertainment
DIFF Documentary City of Hate Reframes JFK’s Assassination Alongside Modern Dallas
Documentarian Quin Mathews revisited the topic in the wake of a number of tragedies that shared North Texas as their center.
Business
How Plug and Play in Frisco and McKinney Is Connecting DFW to a Global Innovation Circuit
The global innovation platform headquartered in Silicon Valley has launched accelerator programs in North Texas focused on sports tech, fintech and AI.
Arts & Entertainment
‘The Trouble is You Think You Have Time’: Paul Levatino on Bastards of Soul
A Q&A with the music-industry veteran and first-time feature director about his new documentary and the loss of a friend.