Artistry on High
THE CEILING IN THE AVERAGE DALLAS residence has about as much decora-tive appeal as the inside lid on a medicine bottle. It’s white, it’s bare except for a light fixture and some minimal texturing, and it’s a bore. So why-when walls and floors get preferential treatment as belles of the hall-do ceilings remain ugly wallflowers?
Dallas interior designer Anne Bigger confesses that she, too, ignored ceilings for a very long time. But her attitude has since changed. “The ceiling is just as important as the floor,” she argues, “and think how much money we spend on floors and floor coverings.”
Bigger makes two recommendations for anyone looking up, decora-tively speaking. First, he subtle. “A lot of people want to paint objects on ceilings, particularly in children’s rooms, but large objects can scare kids. Besides, who wouldn’t get tired of baby gorillas peeking out of palm trees?”
Second, relate the ceiling treatment to the rest of the room. Repeat colors and patterns already found in the room, but mute the effect. “The ceiling doesn’t reflect light like the walls do, so if you want to get the same color you have on the walls, cut it by 50 percent with white to match the color.”
Bigger put all her advice into action on a recent design job for the baby’s room of a North Dallas residence. Working with a plain vanilla shell of a room, she had a painter wash layers of Kelly-Moore blue paint on the walls. Then, borrowing the theme of blue stars on a striped yellow background from a Cowtan & Tout fabric on the nursery’s custom daybed, she cut stars into a plastic template and painted them randomly “in a son: of Milky Way pattern” in metallic gold on the ceiling. Voila! The stars will shine brightly-at least until the next redecorating-on this new son of Texas.
A Hose Ere Blooming
DALLAS GARDENERS WHO DREAMED ON many a winters night of having the perfect rose in bloom can rest assured. After the first of this month, order one of the tea or china roses (among oth-ers) from the trusted Antique Rose Emporium in Brenham, plant according to the attached instructions, and get set for luscious results in April (if all goes well). “Our roses are survivors,” says owner Mike Shoup. “They’ve had to be tougher just to stick around this long.” His country nursery, a delight to visit when it’s surrounded by spring bluebon-nets, has earned a warm spot in the hearts of many local gardeners. Another mailorder favorite among Dallas rose lovers, Heirloom Old Garden Roses in St. Paul, Oregon, ships potted roses the year ’round, The Oregon bushes are smaller than the Texas ones, but they carry similar guarantees.
Antique Rose Emporium, Route 5, Box 143, Brenham, Texas 77833. Call 800-441-0002 to order the $5 catalog.
Heirloom Old Garden Roses, 24062 N.E. Riverside Drive, St. Paul, Oregon 97137. Call 503-538-1576 for the $5 catalog.
Slipping Away
YOUR KID SPIT UP ON ONE OF ITS CUSHions. Your dog tracked mud onto another. Then your spouse dribbled coffee across one of its arms. And, adding final insult to injury, you sloshed part of your glass of wine down its back. Your once proud sofa, originally as pure as the driven snow, has turned into a sty not even Miss Piggy would love.
Just when you really needed them, Gina and Bill Ellis have rolled into town with their Quatrine Washable Furniture. Their chairs, love seats, and sofas feature slipcovers that peel off like banana skins and look like new after they’ve been through your own washing machine and dryer. And there are no unpleasant surprises in store tor you. Every fabric the company sells washes like a dream, and every visible surface of the furniture (not just the pillows) has easy-to-remove, easy-to-put-back-on covers.
At press time the Ellises were scheduled to have already opened their first Texas store (with others in California and Michigan}, a retail gallery on Knox Street in Dallas. Customers, who can select from some 400 fabrics ranging from damask to denim, should expect to pay at least $ 1,350 (and more likely, from $1,600 to $2,000) for an overstuffed sofa with a frame of kiln-dried red alder. If the prices seem a little steep at first, just consider the cost of a new upholstery job every time your sofa gets trashed.
Quatrine Washable Furniture, 3120 Knox Street, 522-2214
The Texture of Tuscany
WHEN LONDON INTERIOR DESIGNER Tricia Guild discovered the 12th-century Italian farmhouse set among the softly rolling hills and olive groves of Tuscany about five years ago, the home hardly seemed the spot for inspiration. Farm animals roamed through the first floor, and the human inhabitants dwelt without plumbing on the crumbling second floor. The fact that Guild purchased the property and set about restoring it no doubt merely confirmed for many the old notion about English madness.
Now Guild has both the last laugh and the first look at the boldest and brightest set of beautiful colors to arise in the home furnishings field in many a season. A new book, Tricia Guild’s Country Color, with text by English author Nonie Niesewand and gorgeous illustrations by international photographer Gilles de Chaba-neix, chronicles the home’s restoration and Guild’s hucolic lifestyle. And just to prove that she’s as smart as a whip (as if anyone had doubts), Guild has translated the colors and patterns of the home and Tuscany into fabrics and wallcoverings sold by her company, Designers Guild, through Osborne & Little.
Tricia Guild’s Country Color, Rizzoli, $45 hardcover.
Designers Guild fabrics and wallcoverings, available through Osborne & Little at Boyd-Levinson & Co. (to the design trade only), 698-0226.
Whirlwinds of Whimsy
IF QUEEN VICTORIA AND ALI BABA joined forces at the Mad Hatter’s tea party, the ideas emerging from that combination of minds might roughly equal the creative capabilities of Richard and Victoria MacKenzie-Childs. They’re a pair of graceful, stylish eccentrics, this hus-band-and-wife team of designers whose furniture and home accessories have invaded a pair of Dallas stores, Neiman Marcus downtown and Suzanne Roberts Gifts in Snider Plaza.
The American-born couple worked as artists and teachers in this country and as potters and clothing designers in England before beginning to dabble in the home products field in the early ’80s. They labored in virtual anonymity until a couple of years or so back, when a Neiman’s executive spotted their work at a New York trade show and snapped up the line. Now they have their own retail store on Madison Avenue, and they’re going strong in more than 100 shops across the country.
Based in upstate New York, the couple design dinnerware, glassware, linens, floor coverings, tiles, furniture, lamps, and trims. Overflowing with whimsy, pattern, and color, the MacKenzie-Childs creations stay busy with an abundance of activity, from swirls to tassels, florals to fringes, polka dots to poufs, arabesques to stripes. Prices for the collection range from $19foranapkinringto$H,500forapaint-ed kitchen armoire,
MacKenzie-Childs, Ltd. products at Neiman Marcus, downtown, 1618 Main, 741-6911, and Suzanne Roberts Gifts, 6718 Snider Plaza, 369-8336.
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