Historic St. Anthony in San Antonio

St. Anthony Hotel lobby

I love fascinating backstories, don't you? The historic 1909 St. Anthony Hotel's new parrot green and gold interiors were inspired by a set of china designed by Dorothy Draper, which had been long lost inside a storage room at the hotel. In the 1950s, Draper designed china for the ballrooms and the hotel’s exclusive St. Anthony Club, and a handful of pieces were discovered during its recent renovation. The inside scoop comes from Colletta Conner, an associate principal for ForrestPerkins, a design studio of Perkins Eastman, who worked on the multi-million dollar project for the hotel's new owners, The Luxury Collection from Starwood Hotels & Resorts.

The "Peacock Alley" lobby area, added in 1930,
includes an original 1927 Steinway grand piano

Lobby detail

Shades of gray throughout the hotel give Draper’s jewel tones a sophisticated edge, Conner told me. The St. Anthony’s 107-year-old footprint remains intact and public spaces have been returned to their original grandeur, including Peacock Alley, built circa 1930 as a lounge and bar overlooking Travis Park, where San Antonio’s chicest would once gather to see and be seen. And what a grand era it was. In its heyday, the St. Anthony drew such luminaries as Eleanor Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, Princess Grace and Prince Rainier of Monaco, Fred Astaire, Judy Garland and John Wayne. And, for the past 75 years the hotel has hosted coming-out balls for Fiesta debutants, as a part of the city’s most celebrated event. 

Grand staircase in the lobby

While most of the new furnishings are custom, an edited selection of antiques were kept and restored, such as a pair of gilt, carved 18th century settees and a 1927 Steinway, which was returned to Peacock Alley. All of the hotel’s original artwork was rehung, along with historic photographs of famous patrons and gloriously gowned Fiesta debs. 

Light-filled dining room off the lobby

 Constructed by a trio of Texas cattle barons, the 10-story St. Anthony was so technologically advanced that it was considered one of the world’s most modern hotels, featuring doors that opened automatically and electric lights that turned off when guests locked their hotel room doors. Newly upgraded with all of the technology you’d expect and just three blocks from the Alamo and River Walk, the St. Anthony is poised to become the glittering center of San Antonio life — once again. Check more of it out here.

TOP 6 PICKS

Fade into fall I love pale pinks, and these new faded pastel fabrics and sheers from Chivasso for JAB are wonderfully fresh for late summer and easing into fall and winter. Chivasso is such an interesting company — a family-run business since the 1980s, it is headquartered in The Netherlands with a focus on creating luxurious textiles that work in young, fun interiors as well as rich, classical ones. German textile company JAB, which purchased a majority share of Chivasso, is also a family-run business since 1946. Chivasso is carried in Dallas and Houston at ID Collection.

A room of one's own there's something really romantic about being out in the wide open spaces and yet secluded at the same time. This floor sample of Patricia Urquiola's Cottage for Kettal is on sale at Smink along with other great designs from Minotti, Arflex, Molteni & C.  I love Urquiola's creations. The Spanish architect and designer has designed for some of the best companies in the world, including B&B Italia, Kartell, Alessi, Driade, Molteni, and Moroso.

Kettal's newest outdoor furniture includes these Riva teak plank chairs, which of course I love with their light pink cushions. They're designed by Jasper Morrison, who does it all — furniture, lighting, kitchen, tableware, electronics, appliances, and even urban design. For Riva, he's also done outdoor sofas, tables, and a deckchair. See them at Smink.

By the slice  Parisian visual artist Pierre Charpin designed the Slice chair in 1998, and while only a handful were ever made, it became an instant classic. After almost two decades in exile, the very sculptural Slice has been resurrected by French furniture design house Ligne Roset. Add a "slice" and the chair becomes a chaise longue; add more and you have a tete à tete or a modular sofa. When I was growing up, there used to be a candy bar called 7-Up, which had seven slices in seven flavors and colors. I don't remember what it tasted like, only that it made me happy to buy it. The Slice chair reminds me of my childhood, and leads me to believe what I've always suspected, that the French have more fun than the rest of us. 

Inventive  Knoll has taken its classic one-tone Bertoia Diamond chair — designed by Harry Bertoia in 1953 — and made it customizable with different color combinations. The new Bertoia Two-Tone Diamond chair really a genius idea that seems so obvious, but apparently it took almost 60 years for the lightbulb to go off. For six decades the chairs were only sold in black, or white, or silver. They feel fresh now and much more fun, don't you think? My favorite is the blue basket with yellow leather seat and white base, but you can customize yours from endless combinations of red, white, yellow, blue, black, chrome, and gray. $1,201 at Scott + Cooner.

Working it  A Koleksiyon showroom recently opened in downtown Dallas, and aren't we lucky, since it sells some of the coolest office furniture around. Koleksiyon is based in Turkey and renowned in Europe for cutting edge designs and clever space solutions for the workplace. Corporate elites such as Mercedes Benz, 3M, and Phillips have furnished their European offices with its products. They may be new in the United States — a New York flagship just opened last year — so you may not yet recognize the names of such far-flung collaborators as Belkis Balpinar, Jan Wertel, and Studio Kairos, but they're clearly reinventing the open office. And it's about time. For instance, the Cap desk (shown) is a lightweight portable desk with a flip-top hood for privacy. The conical Oblivion landscape (below), which looks like a space module that has landed, serves a very real need in an open office — it's both open and available, yet provides plenty of shelving and storage, noise reduction and visual privacy. You should check out their website and take a look at the revolutionary lines they carry. Everything is bright and fun and modular and portable. You may not be a startup, but with furniture like this, you'll certainly feel as hip as one. 

BLACKBIRD FARM

The 1915 Sealy House, one of many rental properties in Fayette County owned by Blackbird Farm. 
Photo Jerry Herring.

Lots of people dream of ditching the big city, moving to the country and starting fresh, but few have done it as well— or on such a grand scale — as Joan and Jerry Herring. The Houston couple decided to get the heck out of dodge in 2008, when a Super Target opened next door to their property near downtown Houston, where they had lived and worked for five years. Both visual artists and photographers, Joan had a successful framing business, while Jerry owned a graphics design firm. Their search for a new place eventually pushed them an hour and a half west into Fayette County, where they purchased 38 secluded acres of rolling hills, pecan trees, a large pond and a few broken-down buildings. “The plan was to build a big house on it and live out there,” says Joan. But when the process took too long, the Herrings hired a barn-builder instead and converted the finished-out structure into a tiny 36’ by 48’ two-story farm house. They turned the sleepy property, which they named Blackbird Farm, into a working ranch with cattle and egg-laying hens. 

Custom-made cedar cabins outside Fayetteville, TX. Photo Jerry Herring.

After a year of commuting to Houston, Joan relocated her framing company to the farm, and Jerry sold his graphic design company to his son. “We never built our big house,” says Joan, without a hint of regret — and why should there be any? During the past eight years, the Herrings have bought a prime chunk of Fayette County — carefully renovating historic 19th- and early-20th-century structures and thoughtfully building new ones, which they rent to visitors from Houston, Austin and beyond. But their bread-and-butter is the dealers, designers and shoppers that frequent the twice-yearly Round Top Antiques Fair. “When we moved here, we didn’t even know what Round Top was,” says Joan. Now, their rental properties are fully booked months in advance of the shows. “Our business has grown along with the antiques fair,” she says. The Herrings’ current rental holdings include nine properties — many of them in the historic town of Fayetteville (15 minutes from Round Top) — such as the 1850 House, a home built around a mid-19th-century log cabin; the 1915 Sealy House, which is on 47 acres; and the 1835 Red & White Inn, a former commercial building on the old square in Fayetteville that once housed a movie theater. Guest rooms are upstairs, with the Red & White Gallery located downstairs, which launched in 2012 with a show by the Herrings’ friend, the respected sculptor Jesús Morales, who died last year. A subsequent exhibit by well-known photographer Laura Wilson (and mother of actors Luke, Andrew and Owen Wilson) attracted more than 250 people (most of Wilson’s work sold out during the event). The couple also built cabins and a multi-use event center, Herring Hall, on Blackbird Farm. But their crown jewel is the elegantly renovated 1898 Market Street Inn, located one block off Fayetteville’s historic main square, which is jointly owned by local Mary Quiros, a walking buddy of Joan’s. “We’d walk around town and get an hour’s worth of exercise every day, and we’d pass by this grand, beautiful old house with its shutters falling off and a For Sale sign out front,” Joan remembers. “‘Mary said, ‘If I was younger, I’d buy it and fix it up.’ So I said, ‘Let’s do it!’” 

Victorian-era Market Street Inn, Fayetteville, TX. Photo Jerry Herring.

The acquisition was a coup — beautiful Victorian-era houses like Market Street Inn have helped put the town of Fayetteville on theNational Register of Historic Places, Joan says. They closed on the property in January 2014 and opened it for guests arriving that spring for Round Top. “We modernized it with updated plumbing and electrical and air conditioning, but we were careful to keep the original old feel of the place,” says Joan. Private baths with six-foot soaking tubs were added to each of the five bedrooms, and the house’s original bead board walls, hardwood floors, carved moldings and doors were retained. The rooms are decorated with furniture and accessories found at Round Top. Quiros donated a stained-glass window that had belonged to her grandmother for one of the bedrooms, and her husband, Evan, a woodworker, built a cedar farmhouse table that seats 10 for the communal kitchen. A pair of original French parlor doors became the new back door, allowing for picturesque views, and custom leaded-glass doors were installed in the front, to give the entry a grand feel, says Joan. A large-scale photograph by Laura Wilson, Dapple Gray, hangs in the foyer. While the Market Street Inn is their most elegant property, all of their rentals are full of luxury and charm, including plush white spa towels, robes, slippers, and fine linens (garment-dyed, eco-friendly Bella Notte bedding in the 1850 House), and vintage and antique quilts and crewel coverlets. Kitchens are stocked regularly with fresh brown eggs from the Herring’s own Barred Rock Hens, along with butter, cream, fresh bread and kolaches from local Czech bakeries. To pay homage to the Red & White Inn’s movie theater heritage, they frequently show old black-and-white films and invite the townspeople; the inaugural show, appropriately enough, was Mr. Blandings Builds his Dream House. The Herrings can barely keep up with the demand for rooms, which Joan says is driven by the popularity of such HGTV treasure-hunting shows as Junk Gypsies, featuring sisters Amie and Jolie Sikes, who have a store in Round Top. “We get from 30 to 100 requests each day for lodging before and during the antiques fair,” says Joan. “We had no idea all this would happen.” To meet the increasing demand, the Herrings have just put a contract on a 600-square-foot property near Market Street Inn. “We fell in love with it,” she says. “It’s a cute little country cottage that looks out onto a beautiful pasture.”

Detail inside the Sealy House. Photo Jerry Herring.

My story on Blackbird Farm originally appeared in PaperCity. To see all of Blackbird Farm's properties and rooms, go here.