Beauty Inspires Here
A
United Methodist Retirement Community
S AN ACCOMPLISHED ARTIST who loves to teach, Steven helps fellow Arbor Acres residents create beauty in our fully equipped studio. Betty impressed Steven with her first-ever painting of hydrangeas. “This place is all about doing your favorite things and finding new interests, too,� she says. At Arbor Acres, our residents celebrate the endless variations and possibilities of beauty. What is beautiful to you?
www.arboracres.org 1240 Arbor Road, Winston-Salem, NC 27104 336 -724 -7921
16 32
54 7 From the Editor
By Jim Dodson
S TYLEBOOK 10 The Hot List
By Jason Oliver Nixon & John Locke
13 Made in the Triad
By Waynette Goodson
16 Hunt & Gather 19 Hidden Gem
By Nancy Oakley
25 Summer Almanac
46
By Ash Alder
27 The Serial Eater
32 Yessir, That’s Their Baby!
LIFE&HOME 64 Hidden Design Gem
67 Prime Resources
FEATURES
By Maria Johnson
Margaret and Taylor Lanier’s stunning renovation of Pandora’s Manor in High Point
43 Inn Style
By Jason Oliver Nixon
Interior designers John Loecke and Jason Oliver Nixon of High Point’s Madcap Cottage transform a guest room at Pandora’s Manor into a detail-driven, relaxed, English-inspired retreat
46 Mod Scientist
By Nancy Oakley
An innovative haven for Winston-Salem’s innovator-in-chief
54 A Tuscan Life
By Ross Howell Jr.
Von and Houston Kimbrough bring a European touch to Guilford County
By Leah Hughes By Noah Salt
70 The Architect’s Son
By Peter Freeman
73 Our Towns
By Ogi Overman
76 Summer’s Top Ten
By Annie Ferguson
79 The Language of Home
By Noah Salt
80 HomeWords
By Nancy Oakley
Cover Photograph by Amy Freeman 2 SEASONS •
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Art for Eyes | Eye for Arts Fine Eyewear, Artwork and Jewelry 327 South Elm | Greensboro 336.274.1278 | TheViewOnElm.com Becky Causey, Licensed Optician Find us on Facebook
Boutique Building at its best!
Vol. 2 No. 2 336.617.0090 1848 Banking Street, Greensboro, NC 27408 www.ohenrymag.com Jim Dodson, Editor • jim@thepilot.com Andie Rose, Art Director • andie@thepilot.com Nancy Oakley, Senior Editor • nancy@ohenrymag.com Lauren Coffey, Graphic Designer Alyssa Rocherolle, Graphic Designer CONTRIBUTORS Ash Alder, Harry Blair, Annie Ferguson, Amy Freeman, Peter Freeman, Sam Froelich, John Gessner, Waynette Goodson, Ross Howell Jr., Leah Hughes, Maria Johnson, John Loecke, Jason Oliver Nixon, Ogi Overman, Noah Salt, Bert VanderVeen
h David Woronoff, Publisher ADVERTISING SALES Ginny Trigg, Sales Director 910.691.8293, ginny@thepilot.com
Gunter Custom Homes & Design is led by Leslie Gunter, a top custom builder and designer
in the Triad, who also currently serves as President for the Carolina’s Chapter IFDA, is an active member of the Builder’s Board of Directors for the Greensboro Builders Association and is a member of ASID. Gunter Custom Homes & Design is one of the few complete design build interior firms in the Triad. Leslie has a diverse background in interior design, interior architecture, interior decoration, and design building. Leslie specializes in masterfully crafted interiors – floors, doors and wall finishes that are both modern and timeless in and of themselves – giving the interiors an enduring quality that makes them appear fresh and relevant for decades. Contact Gunter Homes today for a complimentary consultation and discussion on your new dream home!
Lisa Bobbitt, Sales Assistant 336.617.0090, ohenryadvertising@gmail.com Brad Beard, Graphic Design Hattie Aderholdt, 336.601.1188 • hattie@ohenrymag.com Lisa Allen, 336.210.6921 • lisa@ohenrymag.com Amy Grove, 336.456.0827 • amy@ohenrymag.com Jaime Wortman, 336.707.3461 • jaime@ohenrymag.com CIRCULATION Darlene Stark, Circulation Director 910.693.2488 SUBSCRIPTIONS 336.617.0090
The Triad’s Premier Design Build Firm New CoNstruCtioN | iNterior DesigN
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FROM THE EDITOR
The Green Man Liveth
W
ILLUSTRATION BY HARRY BLAIR
By Jim Dodson
hen we lived in Maine, my witty wife used to say she always knew when spring was becoming summer because a large shrub would be passing the kitchen window on its own power. In fact, this simply meant that her gardening-mad husband was busy moving either a large shrub or a small tree in his faux English, Southern-style garden in the woods, trying to find a more suitable place for a plant that probably had no business growing in the big woods of central Maine to begin with. Despite rumors to the contrary, there is actually such a thing as springtime in Maine. If you pay close attention, you can experience all two or three glorious days of it before it’s officially declared summer. Or, as I took to calling it over the two decades we lived there, the start of Luggage Rack Season. That’s when the tourist occupation begins, and the price of local inns and shore dinners nearly triples, and locals essentially hide out and avoid town center until mid-September. Just between us, I must have killed half a dozen perfectly innocent Eastern redbud trees — my favorite, a true herald of springtime in the South — by hauling them discreetly into the Pine Tree State to plant on a forested hilltop that was at least two zones colder than suitable. Over those years, despite my occasional acts of sentimental arbor-cide, I managed to build a fairly impressive 2-acre landscape garden that never failed to surprise and even impress those rare souls who found their way up our dirt road into the forest — the remains of an abandoned village road that became our driveway in a vast hemlock and birch forest. Truthfully, I expected to live forever on that wild and beautiful hilltop, whatever “forever” means, and even wrote a book about my version of the beautiful madness that propelled me on a year’s amusing journey through the wider world of horticulture. My sojourn included a month of seeking rare species with renowned North Carolina plantsman Tony Avent and several of his plant hunter pals in the remotest parts of South Africa. As adventures go, stalking the smallest hyacinth on Earth or the wild pelargonium in its native habitat turned out to be a personal primer on the majestic power of nature and akin to being in an Indiana Jones film with plant geeks. I came home cut and bruised in places I didn’t even know I had — but one happy and wiser backyard gardener. This spring I began the ambitious restoration of a 70-yearold garden in the Greensboro neighborhood where we moved last fall. With reluctance fueled by keen respect for the house’s original gardener — an old family friend and classy lady named Mama Merle — I removed several ancient boxwoods and azaleas that had seen their better days and saved a grand old Washington hawthorn from being strangled to death by English Ivy. In place of traditional shrubs, desiring a “cleaner” look to the house, I planted ornamental grasses and 15 flowering trees that included Japanese maples, red and white dogwoods, Natchez crape myrtles, junipers and, yes indeedy, a pair of gorgeous Summer 2017
Eastern redbuds in honor of their fallen kin. I finished this work in time to be rewarded with a front yard in bloom. The backyard was the bigger challenge, a jungle of Mahonia shrubs and ivy gone wild. After tearing down an old pergola, I spent several afternoons cutting down and digging up the giant Mahonia bushes (my vote for the worst plant on Earth, and I have the arm wounds to prove it) in order to begin a Japanese garden beneath the ancient white oaks, dogwoods and Carolina silver bells that Mama Merle planted years ago. As summer dawns, the Japanese garden is beginning to come into its own, a shady oasis of cool blue plantings and gravel pathways waiting to provide sanctuary when the furnace blast of midsummer strikes the Piedmont. To give my secret garden a proper anthem, I even managed to hang a set of the largest wind chimes I could find from a high branch of the great-grandfather oak that presides over this sylvan retreat. When the breeze stirs, I swear I sometimes hear the first three notes of “Amazing Grace” as I climb the rickety wooden steps to my writing studio over the garage. Because its windows look out over this small kingdom of trees, I call it the “writing tree house.” Trees of almost any sort, I’ll admit, fascinate and endlessly attract my attention. For years, whenever I traveled for stories here and abroad, I routinely sought out municipal and private green spaces and couldn’t possibly tell you how many hours I’ve spent making notes, reading books, wandering or simply woolgathering though the winding paths of great arboretums and botanical gardens from Brooklyn to Battersea, Portland to Paris. I loved living in a thick Northern forest, and I love the fact that the towns and cities of my native Piedmont offer a diverse abundance of glorious old trees in neighborhoods and parks of the Triad. Whenever and wherever I tool around the region, I often have to simply stop and admire them. Maybe I’m just a wild and wooly Green Man in training. The philosopher Plato believed that the gods and human souls inhabited groves of trees after death. This notion may have given rise to the mythical “Green Man” figure who showed up enigmatically carved into the stone or wood of churches and cathedrals across medieval Europe, commonly a whiskered old gent’s weathered face — maybe gentle, maybe not — gazing upon the passing world from a shroud of leaves and limbs and vines. “Unlike with dragons, lions, centaurs, mermaids and other images of Christian iconography,” notes a website devoted to the famous mystery man of the woodlands, “we have no old tales or medieval literature to satisfactorily explain the meaning of the Green Man. The origins of the phenomenon are lost in the mists of time, and he has waxed and waned throughout history in both his presence and his influence, although never quite disappearing.” I say long live the wild Green Man in all of us who believe that old trees and new gardens keep us young at heart and hearing notes of an Amazing Grace when the summer breeze stirs in the trees. h
When the breeze stirs, I swear I sometimes hear the first three notes of “Amazing Grace” as I climb the rickety wooden steps to my writing studio over the garage.
SEASONS • STYLE & DESIGN 7
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SEASONS • STYLE & DESIGN 9
STYLEBOOK
THE HOT LIST
A Long Weekend Away Let the travel muse inspire your home décor By Jason Oliver Nixon and John Loecke
A
s we move into the languid summer months ahead, why not plan a high-design vacation that doesn’t require a plane ticket and passport? Think: Modernist chic in Charleston, a spa-centric sanctuary in Cary, a taste of Tangiers in the Florida Panhandle and more. Then bring that glorious getaway home with a slew of fabulous furnishings that will deliver endless summer sizzle year round. The Madcap Cottage gents open up their little black books to adventure . . .
Mid-Century and Marvelous
Modern, sleek lines take center stage at The Dewberry, a beautifully crafted hostelry in the heart of Charleston, South Carolina, that nods to Southern grace tempered with a Mad Men — styled cosmopolitan chic. Step inside the gloriously repurposed former federal building and embrace the rich woods paired with burnished metals and Parisianstyled panache. The light and airy guest rooms are complemented by Vermont marble bathrooms that might just tempt you to stay put. But do get out and explore this white-hot city with its myriad historic and culinary temptations. Rooms from $329. Thedewberrycharleston.com Bring the delights of The Dewberry into your own living room with the throwback charms of the Beckett Leather Chair from Rowe that marries mid-century cool with heaps of comfort ($1,699), available through Furnitureland South, 5635 Riverdale Drive, Jamestown, (336) 822-3000. furniturelandsouth.com
Manor Born
A hearty thank you to Chicago-based luxury linen firm Eastern Accents, for its brilliant notion to convert a historic former B&B smack on HP’s downtown train line (407 West High Ave.) into the world-class Pandora’s Manor inn. (See page 32.) In a humble pie moment, the Madcap gents along with five of the world’s top designers were asked to transform the inn’s guest rooms and suites into magic. Abracadabra! The result is sensational and worthy of Travel + Leisure’s It List. Plus, the inn will host chef-cooked, private dinners and can craft bespoke events that perfectly reflect the caliber of the accommodations. There’s nothing like this anywhere, so book a room — or a private dinner — pronto. Pandorasmanor.com Bring the English country house style of the relaxed, layered Madcap Cottage guest room at Pandora’s Manor into your own manor with the Madcap collection of fabrics from Robert Allen @Home. Accessible, and yet always affordable, the collection channels a far-flung glamour that’s anything but beige and boring. Available through madcapcottage.com
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Cool, Calm, Collected
If a spin through Bermuda or a weekend away in Tangiers just isn’t in the cards, a jaunt to Alys Beach, Florida, might just fit the bill. Picture stunning, white-on-white, island-plucked architecture with fountain-filled courtyards, pedestrian-friendly byways, glorious swimming pools and towering palms that offer dramatic, dappled shade. Rent one of the charming homes and cottages (prices from $300 per night) — such as the atmospheric 43 Ladybug Court — and embrace the beautifully designed, yet relaxed lifestyle. It’s a slice of the far-flung and fabulous smack upon the shores of the Panhandle. Capture the sophisticated cool of Alys Beach with the Bellemeade Table Lamp from Currey & Co. ($590) that will add a sunny, exotic spin to any corner that really needs to get lit. Available through Meg Brown Home Furnishings, 5491 U.S. Highway 158, Advance, (336) 998-7277. megbrown.com
Art Imitates Life
A quick spin up the highway will carry you to buzzy, action-packed Durham, and there’s no better spot to savor the scene than the historic, Deco-styled former Central Carolina Bank building that has been deliciously transformed into the art-filled 21c Museum Hotel. And when we say filled with art, no joke: Think ever-changing galleries beside the lobby packed with installations that might include sculptures, videos and paintings that are thought-provoking and anything but safe. Sup on rotisserie hen with rhubarb or the seared monkfish with cauliflower at the open-plan Counting House eatery before retiring to your airy, terrazzo-clad guest room with stunning vistas onto the ever-evolving Durham cityscape. 21cmuseumhotels.com Add a sculptural element to your own home with the arresting Valentino Lamp Table from Woodbridge Furniture that mixes stone and metal to spirited effect ($1,650). Available through Priba Furniture and Interiors, 210 Stage Coach Trail, Greensboro, (336) 334-2498. pribafurniture.com
Into the Woods
A cosseting slice of heaven just off I-40 in Cary, The Umstead Hotel and Spa marries spot-on service and sleek-chic, art-filled interiors with 10-plus acres of woodland. Savor a transporting slice of nature beside the sparkling lake before relaxing in the world-class spa with a treatment such as the Babassu Sugar Scrub or a 75-minute Brightening Facial. The hotel’s Herons eatery will wow you with inspired dishes such as the 62-degree egg with sea urchin, paired with attentive — but never fussy — service and views onto the hotel’s verdant, herb-filled gardens. Theumstead.com Channel the refined luxe of The Umstead with the glittering lines of the Bracelet cocktail table from Baker Furniture, the perfect perch for a cool martini or Negroni ($5,685). Available through Baker Furniture, 319 North Hamilton St., High Point, (336) 885-0186. bakerfurniture.com h
Summer 2017
SEASONS • STYLE & DESIGN 11
When it comes to selling luxur y properties,
OUR KNOWLEDGE IS YOUR ADVANTAGE
12 SEASONS •
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Winston-Salem | golrb.com | 336 779 9200
Summer 2017
STYLEBOOK
MADE IN THE TRIAD
Here Comes the Sun . . . As in, Sunbrella performance fabrics By Waynette Goodson
A
sk almost anyone if they’ve heard of “Sunbrella,” and you’ll find that they light up when they talk about the umbrella on their back patio. The name is a household word. Where does Sunbrella come from? Our own backyard, the Tar Heel State. Sure, parent company Glen Raven Inc. has plants in Europe and China, but it’s actually headquartered in Glen Raven, North Carolina, just three miles north of Burlington. Other locations include Altamahaw, Burlington, Burnsville, High Point, Mebane and Norlina. The total N.C. workforce comprises 967 employees. (Of note, the main manufacturing location is a 1-million-square-foot facility in Anderson, South Carolina.) That’s right, the world’s largest, most innovative performance fabric company is a family-run business stitched into the land of the longleaf pine. And that’s the way it should be, according to Allen Gant III, casual market manager, Glen Raven Custom Fabrics. In 1880, his great-grandfather, John Quintin Gant, founded the company, which is now headed by his father, Allen Erwin Gant Jr. “We started in the 1800s in North Carolina with our cotton mills, and we’ve kept them going,” Gant III says. “The key is not to move these mills to offshore countries. The key is to innovate and change the products and services each mill provides over time.” For example, the company is now renovating the first mill built in 1901 to house its new Sunbrella headquarters, and has repurposed a plant into a new spinning facility just down the street. “We’ve always had a business model in which we make product where it’s needed,” Gant III says. “Our model doesn’t allow
Summer 2017
for centralized manufacturing. We have our facilities in locations that best serve those parts of the world.” And the rest of North Carolina. The furniture industry here is thriving at companies like Miles Talbott, Century, Hickory Chair, Lee Industries and Lexington/Tommy Bahama — all partners with Sunbrella. “There’s no reason to add time and complexity to our supply chain when we can make it right here,” Gant III says. “The state of North Carolina is pro-business, and for that, we are grateful.” His great-grandfather, John Quintin Gant, found the state ripe for business in 1908, when he started making cotton-duck awning fabrics. At that time Glen Raven and the eastern part of North Carolina was a highly profitable cotton hub. During World War II, the company made a name for itself producing parachute fabrics, which it still makes today. In a eureka moment in 1958, Glen Raven invented pantyhose. Just three years later, the breakthroughs continued with the first acrylic-based fabrics — and Sunbrella was born. Since then, the revolutionary cloth has evolved from the original awning fabric (made of cotton and prone to mildew) to a durable material used for shade, furniture, drapery, convertible car tops and marine applications (think: boat covers). Besides its consistent family ownership, the other constant in the life of Glen Raven is . . . change. Innovation has kept the company on the forefront of the furniture industry. The most recent Sunbrella success story is its partnership with Pendleton Woolen Mills, another century-old American company based in Portland, Oregon. The new collection marks two major firsts: Sunbrella had never done a licensing
Trivia Nugget: In 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin planted an American flag on the moon. That flag was made of Glen Raven fabrics woven at the Burnsville, N.C., facility.
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100 Years 5Generations 1 Name
From Our Family to Yours for 100 Years From Christmas dinners to firstday-of-school breakfasts — and all the little moments in between — we’re proud to be a part of your family tradition. Try Neese’s and you’ll see why we’ve been the sausage of choice for a century.
neesesausage.com 14 SEASONS •
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STYLEBOOK
program, and Pendleton had never allowed its wools to be translated into solution-dyed acrylics. It meant that the Sunbrella designers had their work cut out for them researching all the Pendleton fabrics and narrowing them down to five hero patterns: Lahaina Wave, Eagle Rock, Canyon Lands, Zapotec and Mountain Majesty — all inspired by Pendleton’s Native American trade blankets. “They were a wonderful company to work with, and I just love all their patterns,” says Esther Chang, senior designer for Sunbrella. “We developed the collection together, and they were just as involved as we were. We wanted to keep it looking authentic. It’s been a really fun process.” At the High Point Market in April, Century Furniture displayed the new fabrics in all their glory on both indoor and outdoor collections, including their line by another famous North Carolinian, Bob Timberlake. “We’re excited by two great American brands coming together, their heritage and design aesthetic, and extending it to the outdoors,” says Haynes
King, director of outdoor products for Century. “The Pendleton pattern is impactful, and we like how livable the pieces turned out to be.” Of course, it’s only fitting that Sunbrella find inspiration in North Carolina. Design Manager Tracy Greene was driving through Wilson, N.C., when she spied the Whirligig Park created by the late folk artist Vollis Simpson. “I decided to stop by the farm and peek over the fence,” Green recalls. “If you could bottle up childhood and put sparkle and color and light and nature inside the bottle, that’s what it was like; it’s just magic.” In the 1970s, Vollis began collecting spare machinery, appliances, bicycles, road signs and scrap metal, and then transforming them into oversized sculptures that move and spin with the wind. Green was so inspired by what she saw that she created a new contract line of fabrics in six designs: Metal Strips, referencing the salvage pieces; Reflector, with small geometric patterns; Signs, recalling Simpson’s use of road signs; Spokes, featuring an interpretation of the wheels in the sculptures; Wilson, an abstract stripe pattern; and Whirligig, a kind of modern toile. “We’ve partnered with Mayer Fabrics, and now they’re selling this to children’s hospitals and birthing centers, just anywhere that whimsy and fun make sense,” Gant III says. “It’s a huge home run.” It’s also a huge home run for the Whirligig Park, as proceeds from the sale of the new fabric will go toward the park’s preservation. Gant III put it best: “There’s more to fabric than just the yard.” h Waynette Goodson is the editor-in-chief of Casual Living and Exterior Design magazines. Always on deadline, she yearns to relax under a Sunbrella umbrella with a fruity drink and a good magazine, of course.
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336.999.8295 SEASONS • STYLE & DESIGN 15
STYLEBOOK
HUNT & GATHER
Splendor in the Grass Summer is made for picnics Styling by Randy McManus Food Styling by Joe Curran Photographs by John Gessner
T
here are few things so pleasant as a picnic eaten in perfect comfort.” So said the late playwright and novelist Somerset Maugham, echoing a romantic notion that has been around Western cultures at least since the late Middle Ages, when the practice of eating a good meal out of doors with friends gained provenance among the upper classes of English and French societies. The word itself seems to have evolved from middle French pique-nique, meaning a casual social gathering where participants bring their own food. Following the French Revolution in 1789, royal parks opened to the public for the first time, inspiring a wave of enfranchised citizens to dine out of doors in the bosom of nature. In America, romantic landscape painters (particularly those of the Hudson River School) frequently included depictions of picnics in bucolic settings, namely, parklands and formal gardens. It’s unlikely the young picnicking couple here is overly concerned with the evolutionary path of the modern picnic,
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but they clearly embrace the notion that a well-executed summer picnic begins with the right setting and provisions, the ingredients of which are pretty timeless — ripened grapes, well-aged cheese, a fine crusty bread, a chilled vintage wine, the right book of verse and, well, thou. With love in bloom and a bouquet of flowers in hand, what else does one need on a perfect summer afternoon? h OUR PROVISIONS:
Ladies’ sandals from Main & Taylor, Greensboro Dishes, bowls, glasses and pitcher from Carolyn Todd’s, Greensboro Wine cooler designed by Bradshaw Orrell for Chelsea House Flowers, tablecloth, pillows, gold tray from Randy McManus Designs, Greensboro Food from 1703 Restaurant, Winston-Salem Wine from Rickety Bridge, distributed in High Point Summer 2017
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SEASONS • STYLE & DESIGN 17
Looking for imaging professionals you can trust? Look where you live.
You don’t have to go far to find highly skilled specialists for your imaging needs. They’re here in the Triad. Our local radiologists and staff have dedicated their lives to providing quality, compassionate care and fast, accurate results. You get to choose who serves your imaging needs. So if your doctor recommends an MRI, a diagnostic X-ray, lung screening CT or another imaging procedure, request Greensboro Imaging. greensboroimaging.com • 336.433.5000
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STYLEBOOK
HIDDEN GEM
Cherchez la Fermière
The French Farmer’s Wife brings a slice of authentic France to Kernersville By Nancy Oakley Photographs by Sam Froelich
I
t’s a quarter-to-nine on a Thursday morning in spring, and already, a handful of customers are lined up, eager to see what’s behind the massive doors of Kathee Zurian’s barn in Kernersville. She and her business partner, Gail Cekuta, meanwhile, are busy setting up coffee and cookies on the tables just inside, while their marketing director, Janet Cooper-Bridge, is snapping photos. Cekuta’s husband, David, is taking his place behind the cash register. “I just do what I’m told,” he jokes. (Zurian’s husband, Charlie, prefers to avoid the fray, taking refuge in the house, several yards up the hill from the barn.) On the stroke of 9, the doors open, and the patrons wander in, instantly mesmerized by the sight before them: a jumble of rustic French antiques and vintage American pieces, all artfully arranged in “rooms,” as if the chapters of a storybook had suddenly sprung to life. Welcome — or rather, Bienvenue! — to the enterprise that Zurian and Cekuta have dubbed The French Farmer’s Wife. It all started three years ago, when the Zurians, who were by then empty-nesters, decided their Southern California home wasn’t the best place to spend their impending retirement years. “My husband and I moved here after he got a job at B/E Aerospace,” Zurian explains. Through an internet search, she had chosen the house and barn that occupy a hilly stretch of Summer 2017
land just beyond Colfax. “We had horses in California, and horse property,” Zurian continues, “and when we moved here, I said, ‘I don’t want to do the horses anymore.’” Instead, she decided to fulfill a lifelong dream: “Open a barn and have an antiques store.” She opened a booth in Greensboro’s Antique Market Place mall, and it was there that she met Cekuta, who also had a booth. “I’ve been here for about 17 years,” Cekuta says, picking up the thread. The Wisconsin native met husband David in California and the two moved to Texas, where they lived for about eight years. There, Cekuta became acquainted with the trend for shabby farmhouse chic. On visits to the town of nearby Fredericksburg, she was enthralled by the shops and window displays of designer Carol Boulton Hicks. “Her windows were amazing!” Cekuta enthuses. “She inspired me and my friends; she was the first one that looked at things that weren’t perfect as beautiful. And we thought, ‘Wow! This is a cheap way to buy antiques.’” Even more inspiring to Cekuta about the rustic look: “Everything told a story,” she says. She noticed a similar sensibility in Zurian’s booth at the antiques mall. The only difference? “I’ve just always loved anything French,” says Zurian, who frequented eBay for French finds. “I just started changing everything to French. My whole house is French.” SEASONS • STYLE & DESIGN 19
STYLEBOOK
Cekuta remembers the day she and Zurian met. “She was shopping. She had enamelware in her cart, and I’m like, ‘Oh! Those look really good.’ And she said, ‘This is what I’m going to do with them.’” Zurian then decided to pay a visit to Cekuta’s booth. “I knew she had good taste, because the things she picked out were the best,” Cekuta remembers. The two started talking and discovered more in common: Not only had they lived in the Golden State, both their husbands, it turned out, worked at B/E, although in different divisions. “And so, I told Gail I had a barn,” Zurian continues. “You’ve got to come see it. I don’t know if we could do it. It would require a lot of work.” It had been a working horse barn, complete with a hayloft on a mezzanine level. With the help of Jose Hernandez, the caretaker who had maintained the property for its previous owners, the two women and their husbands gutted the structure, ripping out the mezzanine and stalls, cleaning out layers of animal waste and power-washing the walls. “It took almost a year,” Zurian recalls. She insisted that the floors of the former stalls be covered with gravel, the likes of which you’d see in a neat courtyard or backyard garden in the Loire Valley, the Mediterranean or just about anyplace in The Hexagon. The result is the perfect venue for staging the merchandise that the two antiques buffs collect far and wide. “I have a friend who brings containers back (from France),” Zurian explains. “So I’m able to pick through his containers, but other than that, we go to flea markets.” “We travel,” Cekuta adds. To their old stomping grounds, California, and its “great flea markets,” to Texas, where Cekuta’s son still lives. To upstate New York. “I’m on the phone with Kathee, sending her pictures: ‘What do you think? What do you think?’” she adds. Zurian, who once hauled horse trailers, is intrepid when it comes trucking the merch up and down the Interstates. Why so much effort for just a monthly, three-day sale? “You’re not really getting the thrill of the hunt when you find a good piece in an antique store and mark it up again,” says Zurian. “It’s really difficult to resell it. So, we try to find the best prices.” Because the two are spending so much of their time on the road, short monthly sales make sense. Once their desired merchandise is acquired, Zurian and Cekuta spend about a month arranging the wares in vignettes throughout the barn. And their styling of the items sets them apart from antiques shops or shows or auctions. “We’re showing people how to use it all,” says Cekuta. “It’s an experience,” Zurian explains, pointing to an oversized bottle arranged with others above. “They’ll see how to put something together.” And indeed, going through the gutted stalls where horses once slept and
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STYLEBOOK chomped on hay, is like leafing through Peter Mayle’s beloved travelogue, A Year in Provence, or M.F.K. Fisher’s Long Ago in France. Over here, a basket of dried lavender wrapped in brown paper; over there, an area of screen doors and windows frames, dormers salvaged from houses that were facing demolition; brightly colored children’s water pails and building blocks; a Hungarian bee skep, its dried mud shell intact; and hanging directly above, painted metal utensil trays from France, Germany, “all over,” says Zurian. Another “room” contains a bed frame and a pair of worn satin ballet slippers, as if one of Edgar Degas’ dancers had casually flung them aside after a long day of rehearsals. Janet Cooper-Bridge calls this “Cinderella’s Bedroom.” An executive assistant for Hanesbrands since 2003, Cooper-Bridge has found a creative outlet with her own booth, The Barefoot Farm Girl, at Antique Market Place, where she met Zurian and Cekuta, and offered to take photographs of their wares. When it came time to publicize the barn sales, the two ladies immediately hired her to handle their marketing (a sideline for Cooper-Bridge), not only for the quality of her photography, but because she understood the concept of the operation. “I was a food blogger for 10 years,” Cooper-Bridge explains. “We all know
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people eat with their eyes. What I told these ladies: ‘People shop with their eyes and their hearts.’” Seeing the rustic antiques arranged in an artful way, she says, tells shoppers, “You need these things, because you want to create this feel and environment in your own home.” True enough. For who could resist a boxwood wreath resting against a stack of vintage suitcases? Or an old rocking horse, its papier mâché exterior worn off, except for the odd strip of newsprint here and there? Or tiny birds’ nests positioned near the base of a santo, a figure used in religious parades? Or the hundreds of breadboards in sizes ranging from small to enormous, all worn, some repaired, neatly laid in baskets near a wooden trays for baguettes, racks stacked with stoneware and an assortment of Turkish rugs and pillows? Across from these is a zinc washstand from a Catholic school, a washtub and a somber landscape in oils, bits of canvas missing. In another area, which Cooper-Bridge likens to a French apothecary, is a cabinet with a scale resting on top of it and large glass jars containing Summer 2017
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SEASONS • STYLE & DESIGN 21
THE UMSTEAD.COM | CARY, NC | 866.877.4141
WHY GO TO A
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We Service What We Sell & Offer Personal Attention 2201 Patterson Street, Greensboro, NC (2 Blocks from the Coliseum) Mon. - Fri.: 9:30am - 5:30 pm Sat. 10 am - 2 pm • Closed Sunday
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STYLEBOOK Provençal vegetable soaps, and lotions. “This is new,” Zurian says. “We’ve always wanted soaps and we wanted to find the right ones. So we picked each one. We wanted the colors right, the smells right. We’re real picky about that.” The “apothecary” is cordoned off by a large chipped column, and just adjacent to it, a woman’s dress form covered in a linen corset. A giltand-crystal chandelier hangs overhead, and resting on a table nearby, brass shafts embossed with the fleur-de-lys at one end — former curtain rods that have been repurposed as garden stakes. One half expects to see Madame Pompadour cast a gaze across the “apothecary” to the next tableau, where chipped green metal table and chairs might accommodate a couple of older gents sipping pastis over a game of boules. But by Day Three of the sale, says Cekuta, “everything will be completely wiped out.” “Torn apart,” Zurian chimes in. It’s a lesson they learned from their very first sale last October. “Let’s put it this way: We were not prepared,” says Zurian. “We started with just one register,” Cekuta adds. “Then we knew we had to get two.” “The line was out the door to pay,” Zurian remembers. Impressive, considering that The French Farmer’s Wife was advertised only through Facebook, Instagram and word-of-mouth. Zurian and Cekuta weathered the deluge of customers, and the deluge from Hurricane Matthew; during the subsequent two sales, Zurian was hobbled with a foot injury, Cekuta’s husband had a heart attack, and her mother died. “But we got through it,” she says. They have built it and the customers keep coming. On this mild spring day,
Zurian has already fielded a call from a patron traveling two-and-a-half hours away; another showed up a day early. The shoppers, still filing in through the barn, some nibbling on the complimentary cookies, stare in awe at the French wonderland. “Some might stay for as long as two hours,” Cekuta observes. “It’s a lot to take in.” No doubt, some are already anticipating the next sale at The French Farmer’s Wife, which will have a completely different ambiance. Perhaps something more bohemian. By Christmastime, they might display ornaments and glass as they did last year — or maybe not. The fun for Kathee Zurian and Gail Cekuta is conjuring up a new narrative with new merchandise. How ironic to create something so ephemeral with material things . . . and how very French. h The next barn sale at the French Farmer’s Wife Iwill be held July 13, 14 and 15. For information: www.facebook.com/TheFrenchFarmersWifeNC/
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SEASONS • STYLE & DESIGN 23
www.salemwindowsdoors.com NEW HOMES • REPLACEMENT • REMODEL
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Celebrating our first year, July 1st
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Sign up for our furniture painting classes starting in June! 24 SEASONS •
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& DESIGN
Summer 2017
Summer Almanac By Ash Alder
Summer is a poem you can taste Swollen fruit beckons us to the garden, the orchard and the roadside stand, where baskets of golden peaches draw in the warmth of the morning. Trailing vines wind along the woodland path, but damselfly makes her own, dancing from milkweed to goldenrod, goldenrod to thistle. The air intoxicates us, primrose thick and sweet like honey on the tongue. We breathe in the warmth. In June, cicada skin clings to the grooved bark of the ancient willow. We have let go of spring, our palms now cupped to receive July blackberries, homemade mead, scuppernong, Cherokee Purples sliced thick. Plump strawberries slowly vanish from the patch. As evening fades, whip-poor-will sings his name into the darkness. Nothing gold can stay, the crickets lament. And so we savor each delicious moment. Lammas happens August 1. On this harvest festival, the season’s first sheaf of wheat is baked into a sacred loaf. We celebrate the spirit of the grain. We celebrate this season of indulgence. And as we sow our autumn gardens — beets, carrots, peas and greens — we sing to the soil a song of thanks. Another harvest will follow. Be here now, the crickets tell us. They bring us back; invite us to sip slowly the magic of this golden season.
Taste of Summer National Watermelon Day is celebrated on Thursday, August 3. Slice one for a backyard picnic. Slip it into your salsa and salad. Make a sport of seed spitting. Juice one into sinful nectar to add to lemonade or sangria. The following recipe (and homegrown watermelon) came from a friend:
STYLEBOOK In summer, the song sings itself.
— William Carlos Williams
Fresh Mint and Watermelon Float 2 1/2 cups fresh watermelon chunks 12–15 fresh mint leaves, coarsely chopped 12 ounces club soda or carbonated water Vanilla ice cream In a blender, combine watermelon, mint and water. Blend and pulse quickly for 30–60 seconds (or until watermelon breaks down). The blending will “de-carbonate” the water, but it should still have some fizz. Pour mixture through a fine mesh strainer into a large bowl to remove seeds. Fill two glasses with vanilla ice cream and pour watermelon soda over top. Garnish with additional fresh mint. Serves two.
Ethereal Wonders Sure as the July garden brings fresh cabbage (read, sauerkraut), the August sky will reveal to us countless wonders. Following the full Green Corn Moon on Monday, August 7, the annual Perseid meteor shower will peak on the night of Saturday, the 12th, until the wee hours of the 13th. Although a waning gibbous moon may compromise the view, it’s possible to see up to 60 to 100 meteors per hour. Cozy up with the crickets and test your luck. Something you can’t blink and miss: a total eclipse of the sun on Monday, August 21. Visible for up to two minutes and 40 seconds along a narrow arc that starts in Oregon and slices across the states to South Carolina, the Great American Total Solar Eclipse will cause eerie bands of light to shimmer across the darkening sky as the sun slips behind the hungry moon. Do wear eye protection for this so-called “celestial coincidence,” and find maps of the path and more information at www.eclipse2017.org. Prepare to be truly dazzled. North America won’t see anything like it again until April 8, 2024. h
Our fear of death is like our fear that summer will be short, but when we have had our swing of pleasure, our fill of fruit, and our swelter of heat, we say we have had our day. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
Summer 2017
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Gold AwArd desiGn winner APSP SoutheASt 2016
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STYLEBOOK
Luck Davidson, Mary Lacklen, Matt Logan
SERIAL EATER
Bus Boys and Girls
Triad Touring Tasters, a mobile dining club, unites food lovers across the region Photograph by Sam Froelich
I
t’s 5 o’clock and Serial Eater is out the door like a shot. We’ve got a bus to catch and don’t want to miss it. You see, this isn’t just any old run-of-the-mill bus but a special express — the Triple T Express. Now, if you’re scratching your noggin, let us explain: Triple T stands for Triad Touring Tasters, a brand-new, mobile dining concept hatched by those brilliant gals of Triad Local First, Mary Lacklen and Luck Davidson. You know Mary, of Bert’s Seafood and Libby Hill fame? These days, she’s running the beer garden out at Red Oak Brewery and still finds the time to pour her heart — and a whole lotta wine — at Triad Local First’s fundraiser and eat-fest, Community Table. And Luck? Well, Luck be a lady, no ifs about it. She’s the organization’s former executive director and current board member. Its mission, by the way, is to champion independent businesses and encourage folks to buy and eat local. But we digress. Back to the bus . . . Summer 2017
So, one day, Mary signed up for a dinner in downtown Winston-Salem arranged by food blogger Kristi Maier. “And I had just seen Matt Logan,” she says. (You know Matt, artist Connie Logan’s boy?) “And I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if Matt gave us one of his buses for something similar?’” Matt, who’s a financial consultant, says sometimes he and his wife (who used to work for Mary at Bert’s, by the way) come up with “weird” ideas. “We decided to buy a bus and donate it to nonprofits and their fundraisers,” he continues. Since then, he’s ferried folks to Corks for Kids Path, the ’do for Hospice and Palliative Care of Greensboro, and Community Tables (yep, that’s plural this time), the really big ’do that feeds Thanksgiving meals to the Gate City’s needy, courtesy of who else? Mary herself. Well, once Mary thought of Matt’s bus as a way of transporting gourmands to and from various culinary spots in the Triad (a light bulb moment if ever there was one), she floated the
Tricked out with comfy seats configured around the perimeter and lighting that’s neither too dark, nor too light, but just right, this is a living room on wheels!
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STYLEBOOK idea by Luck, who was immediately taken with it. “We’ve got to foster these kinds of collaborations,” she enthused. And before you could say, “Please pass the biscuits,” here’s S.E., pulling into the parking lot of Zeto wine shop in downtown Greensboro for Triad Touring Tasters’ maiden voyage. Because if there’s one thing that rivals our love of food, it’s the company of other serial eaters — or in this case, “Tasters.” And everyone here is plenty excited about our destination: Willow’s Bistro just off the highway in the Brookstown area of Winston-Salem. But first, a how d’ye do and a tipple. Mary and Luck and their sidekick Dunia Fleihan (you know, of the Ghassan’s family?) hand us those nifty little Vino Matic debit cards that you insert into this machine that’s a cross between a Keurig and a vending machine — only for wine. You just pick the bottle that appeals (for S.E., an Italian rosé and an Albariño); then you select the amount of each pour among three options, “Some. Some more. A lot,” jokes that stitch Paul Gibson, former Guilford County commissioner and booster of Triad Local First who’s with his sweet wife, Jane, a public support coordinator for hospice. She’s all smiles, as usual, and after telling S.E. about her latest projects, she extends a warm greeting to Bob Tapp, looking very sporty in a windowpane jacket and a chartreuse shirt. And who’s this? Chip Callaway?! In a sling? “How’d you hurt yourself?” asks Luck. “Oh. Dancing with the Stars,” quips the garden guru. Beware the chacha, Chip!
He and his pal Fred fill some go-cups, because as Fred says, “If I have a designated driver, I’m going to enjoy this ride!” (Our hostesses with the mostesses thoughtfully buy a couple of bottles from Penny, the co-owner of Zeto.) Now, it’s time to board the Triple T Express. And, oh! We’ve never seen a bus like this: Tricked out with comfy seats configured around the perimeter and lighting that’s neither too dark, nor too light, but just right, this is a living room on wheels! “How cool would it be to have a succession of garden parties with this?” Chip muses. Mary’s beau, Allen Odom, extols the virtues of a cast-iron skillet he bought at the Mast store in Winston-Salem’s Art District. S.E. couldn’t agree more, especially when it comes to making cornbread. “Anybody been to Willow’s?” asks Randy Barnes (he does website and photography for Triad Local First). “I’ve been there probably 25 times!” he laughs. “Who wants wine?” Mary asks. “Who needs another?” echoes Paul, when the bus lurches to a sudden stop. Go-cups filled (and refilled), Mary thanks us and leads a round of applause and “woo-hoos” for Matt and the driver. And hardly any time passes when we arrive at Willow’s. It’s in that long brick building just south of Biz 40 near Kaleidium Downtown (formerly the Children’s Museum) just before you get to Old Salem. The space inside is intimate, warm and inviting, with hardwood floors and a funky selection of art hanging on its exposed brick walls. Equally warm and inviting is our reception: Chef Travis Myers has
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28 SEASONS •
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336.765.5919
www.LastersFineArt.com
Summer 2017
STYLEBOOK dedicated a table, a congenial server named Michael and four-course menu just for the Tasters. Quite a feat when you consider this place is packed! But Chef Travis is unfazed; crowds are the norm for Willow’s, as any Sunday brunch regular can tell you. His commitment to using the freshest of fresh ingredients from local farms has ’em beating down the doors. He’s wearing the jacket awarded him for preparing a nine-course feast for last year’s Community Table (you know, the eat-fest we mentioned earlier), and cordially greets us, explaining each course after Michael serves up beverages. First up: a salad of turnips, radish, beet greens and raw roots, courtesy of Harmony Ridge Farms, with a little Granny Smith and pancetta thrown in. Keeping with his mission of keeping it all fresh and local, Chef Travis has lightly swished it all in a deconstructed Dijon-and-Goat-Lady-Dairy vinaigrette. Next comes smoked risotto in a pistou with a base of Fair Share Farm’s pea shoots and a sun-dried-tomato aioli on the side. Such an eye-catching presentation that everyone reaches for their smartphones and starts clicking. All the while we’re chattering about the food, and just about anything else you can think of under the sun. Luck migrates to one the end of the table, Matt migrates to the other. And — hullo! — who should walk in but Carroll Leggett, Twin City food blogger and general man about town, who stops for a brief chat. That’s the beauty of this setup: Not only do you get to know your fellow traveling diners, you might also become acquainted with Triad residents who aren’t officially on the Tour. The more the merrier, we say. Chef Travis returns to introduce the entrée and tour-de-force of the evening, light and flaky N.C. wreckfish (so called, Mary explains, because it’s found swimming among wrecks), in “chowder” with chunks of Smith Farm rutabaga, Fair Share Farm broccolini, and — who’d have thunk it? — hard salami. We all agree, it’s the best fish we’ve ever eaten. But wait! There’s always room for dessert! Tonight, it’s Chef T.’s interpreta-
tion of banana cream pie. And no, not that gooey confection many of us Tar Heels call ’nanna puddin’ but an oh-so-light, elegant mélange of tiny banana cheesecake slices, vanilla wafer bits, toasted meringue and banana cream. Slurrrp! Well, didn’t Mama always tell us to clean our plates? We applaud Chef Travis before taking our leave. And on the short ride back, savoring truffles from Greensboro’s Loco for Coco that Mary and Luck have thoughtfully provided, we deconstruct the evening and look to the next Tour: Libations at Greensboro’s Four Flocks and Larder followed by brunch at Mary’s Gourmet Diner in Winston. But, says Mary, “Not every Tour will start in Greensboro or end in Winston-Salem” The journey could just as easily flip these starting and finishing points. “We’ve also got our eye on High Point, Kernersville, Asheboro,” Luck says. “Places that are easy to get to but it only takes one visit for people to realize it.” Nor will they all include fine dining spots. The Dynamic Duo of Triad Local First dreams about the possibilities: burger crawls, pizza joints, beer tastings, picnics. Maybe entertainment on the bus rides: how-to videos by the chefs, live tunes by a local musician, or a reading from someone like that Dodson fella, for example. “I’d love for young people on budgets to participate,” says Mary. “The sky’s the limit!” says Luck. “Oh, this sling,” says an aggravated Chip. “Maybe I should switch to crepe de chine.” We tumble out of the Triple T, exchange hugs and good-nights, and vow to reconvene for the next Tour. After all, this an idea with legs . . . or rather, wheels. h To learn more about Triad Touring Tasters, visit triadlocalfirst.org. For tickets: eventbrite.com.
Historic Inspiration. Modern Expression.
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Summer 2017
Product Shown: Campo A3318IW Lavatory Faucet
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30 SEASONS •
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Summer 2017
“Summer, after all, is a time when wonderful things can happen to quiet people. For those few months, you’re not required to be who everyone thinks you are, and that cut-grass smell in the air and the chance to dive into the deep end of a pool give you a courage you don’t have the rest of the year. You can be grateful and easy, with no eyes on you, and no past. Summer just opens the door and lets you out.”
Summer 2017
D ― eb Caletti, Honey, Baby, Sweetheart
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Yessir, That’s Their Baby!
Margaret and Taylor Lanier’s stunning renovation of Pandora’s Manor in High Point By Maria Johnson • Photographs by Bert VanderVeen
G
reensboro’s Taylor and Margaret Lanier have four children. They really don’t need another. But they have one — a 112-year-old baby that hangs out by the railroad tracks in downtown High Point. That would be Pandora’s Manor, a boutique bed-and-breakfast that the couple, who own Lanier Builders, have painstakingly restored and expanded over the last year and a half. “It’s been a time-consuming labor of love,” says Margaret Lanier. “Having to be there all the time and supervise — it’s like having a baby. You can’t leave it alone, and you get very attached.”
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The B&B’s owner, Chicago businessman Ridvan Tatargil, is tickled at the new arrival on the High Point hospitality scene. “It’s better than I thought it could be,” says the 58-year-old Tatargil, who has been coming to the city’s furniture market for 30 years to push the wares of his primary concern, Eastern Accents, a maker of luxury bedroom textiles. The company has a showroom in Market Square, right around the corner from Pandora’s. Tatargil had noticed the white Classical Revival manse from a parking lot. He got nervous when he found out another home on the street had been demolished. “I thought, ‘Oh, my God, this is going to go down, too. I wish I could buy it before it goes down,’” Tatargil says. “And I did.” He bought the trackside home for a little under half a million dollars in 2015 with an eye to renew, rename and reopen the property that had been operating as Wilson House Bed and Breakfast. Two years and $2 million later, Pandora’s Manor is a done-to-the-max showplace, thanks largely to the Laniers. They knew Tatargil because they had worked on a High Point home that Eastern Accents maintains for employees who come to town during furniture market. “It’s like a bunkroom,” says Margaret Lanier. “It’s got, like, 40 single beds in it,” chimes in Taylor. The Laniers were the first builders Tatargil called after buying the 6,200-square-foot B&B on West High Avenue. “We were looking for a contractor who would go slow and keep talking to us about every detail,” says Tatargil. “A lot of times, when you have a tradesman like Taylor, you make a suggestion, and they say, ‘No,’ and the egos get involved. But Taylor is very easy to work with. He listens to find a compromise.
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He’s a very professional person to work with.” Tatargil’s idea was to use the bed-and-breakfast as a marketing tool for Eastern Accents. He would round up designers — some of whom sell their merchandise through his company — and give each a bedroom to decorate. Tatargil would foot the bill. The only stipulation: The designers had to use Eastern Accents bedding, upholstered headboards and curtains. The other pieces could come from the designers’ lines or from a list of preferred vendors. If Pandora’s guests wanted any accessory or piece of furniture in the house, they could order it. In essence, they’d be sleeping in a showroom. “It’s kind of interesting to have a living, breathing showroom in a town that’s full of empty showrooms most of the year,” says Louise Traficanti, the design director at Eastern Accents and chief shot-caller for the Pandora’s project. The Laniers — Margaret runs the office, Taylor runs the construction side — first saw the house in September 2015. “We broke walls in November,” Taylor says with a grin. The Laniers’ initial order was to renovate one bathroom and to tear out a backside stairwell to make space for a half-bath. “We didn’t even get that done before they said, ‘Let’s renovate four more bathrooms and get started on the kitchen,’” says Taylor. “It grew from there.” Eventually, the Laniers redid the entire home, from paint and wallpaper, to plumbing and wiring and trim. Doors came and went. Walls disappeared and reappeared. Interior chases that hid pipes and wiring vanished. Summer 2017
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A new rear entrance, with porte cochere and reception area, materialized. Following the plans of Greensboro architect Wayne Smith, the addition wore the same architectural details as the original home: cedar lap siding, Ionic columns, and granite steps and granite foundation veneer. As much as possible, Traficanti and Tatargil remained true to the home’s turn-of-the-century roots. Inside, that meant preserving the original oak floors, with planks laid in concentric rectangles in every room. The oak wainscoting stayed, too. Taylor Lanier personally reproduced wainscoting that had been removed for a conduit in the dining room. “When it comes to trim, I’m hands-on,” says Lanier, a Grimsley High School graduate. “I’ve done everything, but I like woodworking the best.” Other keepers included the oak banisters, diminutive stair railings, heavy oak mantels and, often, the iron doors of the coal-burning fireboxes. In several rooms, Lanier and his subcontractors added a picture rail a foot or so below the ceiling, harking to an era when pictures dangled on wires anchored at the rails. They also hung reams of wallpaper reminiscent of early 20th-century motifs. The main halls are covered with a hummingbird design on a muted gold foil background. Margaret Lanier, a UNCG graduate whose father is former CBS golf announcer Ben Wright, says people often remark that her husband is young,
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at 38, to have such a way with old houses. He had worked in Greensboro’s historic Fisher Park and Westerwood neighborhoods, but he’d never tackled a project like Pandora’s Manor. “This is the oldest, by far,” Taylor says. Built in 1905, the B&B is named for Pandora Fraser, wife of the home’s first owner, Henry Fraser, founder of the Alma Furniture and the Myrtle Desk companies, which were located right down the street. Pandora is memorialized in a stained-glass window on the landing. The panel shows her as a Madonna-like mother holding her daughter, Isla. Henry Fraser commissioned the work after Pandora Fraser died in 1920, at age 67. “He was heartbroken after she died,” says Traficanti. “He was a very religious man, and I think that’s why he went for the Madonna and child image.” The home’s historic designation — it’s on the Guilford County Historical Register — required the window to stay, even when it was blocked by the addition. Lanier built a light box behind the stained glass to keep Pandora and her daughter glowing. Soon after Pandora died, Henry Fraser moved to Florida and sold the home to local car dealer George F. Wilson, owner of High Point Motor Co. The Wilsons’ 10 children — two of whom died in infancy — filled the home. The home remained in the care of Wilsons for three generations, until Tatargil came along in 2015. Actually, one of the Wilsons might be knocking around yet. Some believe Summer 2017
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the spirit of a family member who died in the house inhabits an upstairs room. “I had an electrician leave one night because of it,” says Taylor. On this side of the veil, one of the Wilson grandchildren, Frienda Tagliaferri of Thomasville, visited Pandora’s Inn with her husband, Bill, after the renovation was complete. “It’s absolutely breathtaking,” says Frienda. “It’s really something to be proud of.” Nowhere is the renovation more marked than in the kitchen, which was probably updated in the 1990s. Lanier and crew hauled it into the present day with custom coffered ceiling, commercial-grade stainless steel appliances, and leathered black granite counters. More modern than any room in the home, the kitchen harbors a vast L-shaped dining bar topped with walnut milled to resemble wavy, live-edge timbers. JThompson Tops in Sandy Ridge handled the countertop. “I wanted to put a wood feature in the kitchen because wood is such a prominent feature in the house,” Traficanti says. “I didn’t want it to feel like a restaurant kitchen. I wanted it to feel residential.” Industrial black-can pendant lights, by Currey & Company, complete the chic sawmill look. Traficanti also directed the renovation of the bathrooms, which are done primarily in black and white tile; designers picked paint and wallpaper that meshed with their rooms. Each has a distinct style.
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John Loecke and Jason Oliver Nixon, the owners of Madcap Cottage in High Point, were the only local designers to get a room. (See story on page 43.) The room done by Celerie Kemball, of Palm Beach and New York City, sighs in soft pastels. Tobi Fairley, a domestic diva out of Little Rock, Arkansas, made her room buzz like a bumblebee with vibrant yellows against black walls. Manhattanite Alexa Hampton’s room luxuriates in deep blues and chocolates punched with bright red curtains. Thom Filicia, who’s also based in Gotham, crafted a suite full of long lines, including three stripes of horizontal white trim across slate blue walls. Barclay Butera, from Los Angeles, grounded his suite in restful navy and creams that call to mind a swanky sunroom. Working with top designers was an experience, says Taylor Lanier. Yes, they were picky; Lanier and his team painted and repainted, papered and repapered several times. Designer Filicia insisted that the molding in his room be moved, slightly, three times. “Homeowners don’t know what they want,” Taylor Lanier says. “Designers know exactly what they want, and they get it spot-on. We’re happy to do it. It pays the bills.” With room rates starting at $500 a night — suites go for $1,000 a snooze — Pandora’s hopes to woo visitors to furniture market, High Point University, High Point Regional Hospital, Furnitureland South and the Summer 2017
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corporate offices along N.C. 68. “This is a special place for people who want a special experience,” says events coordinator Connie Lineberry. “No detail has been spared.” The inn also hopes to attract non-lodgers who want to rent the kitchen, dining room and wraparound porch for weddings, graduations and other occasions. As soon as the beer and wine license comes through, Lineberry says, Pandora’s will offer Sunday brunches and evenings with wine on the veranda. The crowds can only grow. The Laniers’ next assignment is to build an event space in the parking lot behind the B&B. The glassed-in pavilion, flanked by prep kitchens, will seat about 200 people. Tatargil’s daughter Leyla plans to get married there next summer. Already, the Laniers are upgrading a duplex, on nearby Oak Street, to be used as a home for Pandora’s innkeeper. And who knows, maybe they’ll get the call to refurbish a couple of more High Point properties that Tatargil recently picked up: an old bar at Oak Street and West Green Drive that he wants to turn into a craft brewery, and the former headquarters of the N.C. Shakespeare Festival, a 55,000-square-foot warehouse at West Green Drive and West Ward Avenue. Tatargil envisions the site as a working space for artists and craftspeople. The Laniers are happy to expand their family with more projects. “We’re very thankful for them,” says Margaret, “be they the sixth, seventh, eighth or ninth child.” h Maria Johnson is a regular contributor to Seasons.
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Inn Style
Interior designers John Loecke and Jason Oliver Nixon of High Point’s Madcap Cottage transform a guest room at Pandora’s Manor into a detail-driven, relaxed, English-inspired retreat
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By Jason Oliver Nixon • Photographs by Bert VanderVeen
n the film A Night at the Opera, Groucho Marx picks up the phone, and the scene goes like this:
Ring. Ring. “Room service? Send up a larger room.”
And while the times have changed, hotel dilemmas most certainly have not. We have all booked hotel rooms that lacked luster and aplomb. In today’s world, however, we needn’t bother to ring up the hotel operator to wax Marxist with our complaint when we can post a scathing remark on Twitter or, worse, Yelp. Summer 2017
I grew up in a family that traveled a lot — especially to New York and Europe (and this for a kid from 1970s-era Tampa, Florida, to boot!) — so we spent a lot of time in hotels. And until my brother and sister came along when I was about age 10 (rue the day!), my parents regularly checked into the best and brightest hostelries as we hightailed the globe. Let’s see . . . The Junior League floor at Manhattan’s Waldorf Astoria. But, of course. (Why there was a Junior League floor in New York City, I cannot say, but it was a sea of blues and pinks, and it was wonderful.) The concierge at The Savoy in London who gave me a toy double-decker bus (that I still have). “Top notch,” I opined.
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L’Hôtel in Paris. “Absolument!” I trilled. I can distinctly recall our color- and prints-packed room at the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island at about age 7, and I traipsed through the hallways at The Plaza in New York City like I was the male equivalent of Eloise searching for a lost Weenie and Skipperdee. “Charge it, please.” At about the age of 9, I informed my mom that I missed room service when we were stuck at home during a particularly travel-free dry spell. Mom rolled her eyes and advised me to take out the trash. “Maintenant!” Fast-forward to the here and now. John Loecke, my happy-go-lucky partner in the Madcap Cottage adventures, entered the hotel game a bit later in life as road trips to Grandma’s house were more de rigueur for his family vacations in Iowa circa-1975. But once the Madcaps merged, the world was our oyster. Let’s come clean: First and foremost, I am an interior designer. But I have also always been an editor and writer with my hands in various luxury-minded publications and television productions. (I was Robin Leach’s producer in the late 1990s!) So I have been lucky enough to partake in a rarefied world that I could hardly ever afford. Heavily reduced-rate, aka “media rate,” hotel rooms and meals are standard practice for my line of work. With a fruit basket or bottle of wine in the room, guaranteed. Over the years, I might not have had a cent to my name, but I could certainly score a suite on Sutton Place for a long weekend and some free room service. “Garçon, hold the cornichons!” As I said, the Madcaps took to the road like nobody’s business. And when we traveled to these far-flung and fabulous locales, John and I would make copious notes about what we loved and what we didn’t and how we could bring these adventures home. Taj Lake Palace in Udaipur, India. Heaven! The best. Wow. The Ritz Paris. So welcoming to Americans — truly! — but it needed an overhaul (which the iconic hotel has just, happily, had to much fanfare). The Greenbrier is amazing, but the Bel-Air renovation was less than remarkable. The staff at that hotel bar in Madrid was mean, and we couldn’t find an outlet for our phones in Dubai. When the Madcaps design homes for clients and craft products for our licensed lines, we have always tried to bring our passion for travel and adventure into the mix. It’s all about creating a home or environment that is both beautifully inviting but also perhaps a tad transporting. And it’s the details that really make a house a home. Riffing off that brand sensibility, the Madcaps have always wanted to design a small hotel, from soup to nuts. So when our good friend Louise, the creative director at Chicago’s luxury bedding firm Eastern Accents, rang us up last year with a proposition, John and I practically frothed at the mouth. “Jason, it’s Louise. Ridvan [Tatargil, the owner of Eastern Accents] has just purchased the historic, century-old Wilson House B&B behind Lee Industries in downtown High Point, and we would love for the Madcaps to design a guest room. It will be you and John, Alexa Hampton, Barclay Butera, Thom Filicia, Tobi Fairley and Celerie Kemble. The design of the hotel will be stunning, and so, too, will the service.” Wait, what? Downtown High Point, my hometown? John and I moved from Brooklyn to High Point to be part of the city’s downtown revitalization and next chapter, so this was pure magic. Something upmarket that doesn’t only revolve around Market? To have talent of that caliber and not in an L. A. or Palm Springs or Berlin?
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A real premium put on service? Hurrah! The Madcaps are all about great, intuitive and kind service in a world that has become so impersonal and uncaring. If a hotel looks great but doesn’t deliver on the service component, then the formula is a fail. A historic property with heaps of provenance? I think that John and I audibly shrieked. The brief was simple, straightforward. “You have the ground floor bedroom. Create the room of your dreams,” said Louise. Hello, dream client. And so John and I set to work. We wanted to create a room that would showcase our collection of fabrics for Robert Allen @Home, each inspired by our travels — from jaunts to India and China and long weekends sketching and painting in the English countryside. Comfort would be key: Rooms without the aforementioned outlets beside the beds and a lack of good reading lights define a lack of attention to detail, so we made sure to have all of the creature comforts top of mind from the outset. We sketched, we drew, we cut out furniture and moved it around on the schematic. And, as storytellers, we crafted a mythical tale that would guide our vision: “Imagine fabled English novelist Nancy Mitford running off for a long weekend, escaping from her workaday cares and seeking a cosseting retreat where she could read, sip a cool cocktail and avoid the harsh grasp of that pesky, ever-present social media. ‘I need comfortable luxe,’ cooed Nancy. ‘And no pretense. Let me put my feet up, play canasta and retreat from the world.’ But where to go?” Upholstered walls. Gorgeous window treatments. Silk cording to frame the crown and baseboard molding. A custom armoire aged with wax to appear as though it was transported from a Derbyshire, England, estate. Bespoke lampshades. A braided rug. Heaps of good lighting and comfortable chairs. Outlets front and center on both night tables. Antique garden prints upon the walls that we collected over the years at London flea markets. Rich green trim and a stunning blue ceiling. Intuitive design that doesn’t feel forced. Think layering! Details! Takeaway ideas! A room that feels anything but like a showroom. We met with electricians and contractors, we speed-dialed the fantastic team at Eastern Accents in Chicago ad nauseum (sorry, friends!) who were crafting our highly detailed window treatments, and we found a local talent to make hand-sewn lampshades. We tweaked, we texted, we compared notes. And our vision quickly came to life. The result is relaxed, pure put-your-feet-up chic. Granted, we used 300-odd yards of our Madcap Cottage for Robert Allen @Home fabrics, but nothing about our room feels stuffy or dated or overdone. Kick back with a good book — perhaps Love in a Cold Climate, by Nancy Mitford — and relax, retreat and recharge. Or crank up the TV, a truly cutting-edge, custom number deliciously hidden behind a mirror over the fireplace, and watch a weekends-worth of The Crown. But be sure to leave the sanctuary of your stay not only to savor the other myriad pleasures of the inn (oh, your gracious hosts, Justin and Baker!) but also to explore the charms of up-and-coming High Point and the surrounding Triad. And there you have it. So come pay us a visit! We would love for you to check in, and check us out. We’ll see you at the Manor! h Jason Oliver Nixon — along with his partner, John Loecke — is the co-founder of High Point-based design firm Madcap Cottage. The Madcaps have product lines with Robert Allen @Home, Smith & Noble, Howard Elliott, and HSN. A wallpaper and made-in-America upholstery line are next up for the gents.
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Mod Scientist An innovative haven for Winston-Salem’s innovator-in-chief
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By Nancy Oakley • Photographs by John Gessner
ith a bemused expression, Eric Tomlinson explains how his house has caught the attention of various filmmakers over the years. One used it as the setting for a music video, “in which a girl rises out of a bed and ends up dancing on what looks like a car park,” Tomlinson says. Perhaps more dubiously, “It’s been in a horror movie, The Ridge,” he continues. “The ax-murderer rises up out of the pool!” He chuckles, acknowledging that at nighttime the “spooky” woods surrounding the house, set among 6 acres on the outskirts of Winston-Salem, are an easy inspiration for young creatives with vivid imaginations — and Tomlinson’s own grandchildren, who, he says with a Summer 2017
sly twinkle, “are always finding ‘dead bodies’” on the property. As he pads across the blond hardwood of the sleek, Modernist dwelling that he shares with his girlfriend, DeeDee Harrington, Tomlinson explains his own attraction to their abode. “The impact of the house is nice when you come home,” he says. True enough for anyone who puts in a hard day’s work, but when your job is one of Herculean proportions — in Tomlinson’s case, advancing the Twin City’s knowledge-based economy — home takes on greater meaning. Since 2012, when he relocated from Atlanta, Tomlinson, D.Sc., Ph.D., has brought his vast experience in academia and the pharmaceutical industry SEASONS • STYLE & DESIGN 47
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to assume dual roles: As chief innovation officer of Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, he is responsible for accelerating medical innovations from lab bench to marketplace; his second role is president of Wake Forest Innovation Quarter, the burgeoning downtown district of repurposed tobacco factories, trendy lofts, coffee shops, startups and public parks, where research, business, education and design intersect. Tomlinson is also a professor of physiology and pharmacology at Wake’s School of Medicine, a recent tenant in Innovation Quarter. To say that the scientist/entrepreneur’s workdays are jam-packed would be a gross understatement. Little wonder he finds the sight of his abode at day’s end so inviting. Stretching across a leafy ridge where his and Harrington’s two rescue dogs, Snowy and Millie, like to roam, the house, with its striking tile-and-glass façade, commands the property; yet through those same window-walls, nature commands and softens its stark interior. Harrington finds this feature particularly appealing and, as a physician’s liaison at Thrive Integrated Health, a local holistic medical practice, she appreciates its therapeutic value. “You feel like you can breathe,” Harrington says. “I like the privacy.”
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reating a relaxed ambience was the intention of house’s architect, Edwin Bouldin, responsible for preserving some of Winston-Salem’s most beloved landmarks. In the late 1970s he developed the master plan for converting the utility buildings on the Reynolda estate into the upscale shopping enclave Reynolda Village. And in 1980, Bouldin was called on to restore Graylyn, the Norman-style estate that once belonged to R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company executive Bowman Gray, after it sustained substantial damage to its upper story in a fire. In 1984 he designed the house, called Shallowford Cliffs, for two male clients “who wanted . . . maximum views of the wooded site.” Recently reflecting on the genesis of it, he adds that “most projects begin diagrammatically or as a simple conceptual drawing on trash or the back of an envelope. This project was unique in that very little changed from the initial sketches.” Bouldin employed a linear layout: The main level is anchored by two master bedrooms at one end of the house, a guest suite and study at the other; for these sections he chose commercial split-face
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masonry to “bookend” the ubercontemporary glass-and-tile middle section, consisting of the kitchen, living area and a swimming pool encased in glass, much like a greenhouse. A lower level contains a spacious garage, “one of the selling points,” says Harrington, who was a real estate broker in Atlanta and still holds her license. “There’s so much storage, you don’t see anything; two cars and that’s it.” It’s but one example of the cleverness of Bouldin’s design that has garnered wider acclaim. In 1990, AIA North Carolina deemed the house worthy of its Excellence in Architecture Honor Award. Citing “a marvelous clarity of vision,” AIA’s jury remarked: “The house is refreshingly modern, serene, elegantly sited, complex and beautiful.” Two years later, the North Carolina Museum of Art would concur, featuring it in its exhibition, From the Ground Up: Experiencing Architecture. But, in a nod to Le Corbusier, Bouldin says he designed the house as “a machine for living.” As Tomlinson and Harrington discovered when they bought it in 2013, its bones have held up well. “Usually, a house shifts,” Harrington notes, but according to their house inspector, it hadn’t moved. Even so, it had sat virtually unoccupied after its second owners sold it, and some things needed immediate attention: namely, water damage to the guest bedroom from a line that feeds a waterfall feature in back of the house. And the front yard desperately needed some landscaping. Overgrown, the front looked dreary, the original concrete steps leading to the entrance, severe. Tomlinson and Harrington relied on the expertise of Saura Farm Nursery & Landscaping in Pinnacle, North Carolina (now closed), to brighten the space. The landscapists removed several trees, opening up the view of the house from the street, and planted a garden of various exotics, dwarf shrubs, conifers, a Japanese maple, all laid out in sections or “little rooms,” as Tomlinson calls them. Out came
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the concrete steps, and in their place, large stepping-stones. The plantings and rocks set the stage for the house’s dramatic rise against a screen of hardwoods on the ridge behind, but help to tone down its imposing angles; they also complement the neat pebbles and fern border of the adjacent Zen garden installed by the previous owners.
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he Zen-like ambience pervades the interior of the house, owing not only to the natural surroundings visible through its glass walls, but also to the minimalist style its inhabitants prefer. Tomlinson has gravitated to the spare look, “because it’s the exact opposite of how I grew up,” he says, referring to his roots in Liverpool, England. “I grew up as a child in a very modest house full of stuff,” he recalls. “My mom was always cleaning up stuff.” So when he and Harrington moved into this house, they divested themselves of a good number of their belongings — all but a stack of books, the contents of the kitchen. “Because after all, what does stuff do? It bogs you down. Do you really need 25 T-shirts?” Tomlinson posits. “I’m OK with mementos.” And indeed, on the walls of his study are family photographs from an earlier married life, framed diplomas, a colorful canvas of his grandchildren’s handprints, a photo collage of places and people, one of whom looks startlingly familiar. A closer glance reveals it to be David Bowie as his alter ego, Ziggy Stardust. “I saw him a couple of times in the ’70s,” Tomlinson says, pausing before he admits to imitating the glam rocker’s signature fire-engine red hair and stripes back in the day. A biography of the late musician takes a prominent place among a handful of volumes — histories and biographies, mostly — that did survive Tomlinson’s and Harrington’s purge of personal effects. Alongside some glass pieces and a drone (a Christmas gift that Tomlinson says he’s still getting the hang of), the books are the only objects occupying the floating shelves. They are new to the sweeping living room that was once hemmed in by a large, metallic TV console, and whose walls were covered in mirrors and Hessian cloth. The couple opened up the space when they made the
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decision to remodel the kitchen two years ago. “Eric and I spent a year talking about how we wanted to do it,” Harrington remembers. “Every time somebody came over, we asked, ‘What can we do better?’” A friend suggested removing a bar that once stood between the kitchen and dining room. They added it to a list of other concerns: the narrow space between the kitchen counter and blocky square island. “And then we ripped it out with a vengeance!” says Tomlinson gleefully. Harrington credits him for looking beyond the old configuration and visualizing the new, which includes an elongated island, a wider working space between it and the counter, plus integrated appliances in neutral tones. They engaged Buddy Glasscoe and Susan Bradford, the husband-and-wife team of Timberwolf Designs, to handle the renovation. Bradford, who oversees the design side of the business, found her clients “a joy” to work with. “Eric was very into the details, and made sure things lined up,” she recalls. “The subs and Summer 2017
the guys who installed the cabinets really enjoyed it, because they loved making everything linear.” Overall, she deems the project “a whole lot of fun, because it had to do with the feel of the space [of the house].” In the midst of the renovation, Harrington and Tomlinson decided to invite Bouldin to have a gander at the changes they’d made. His assessment? “Shallowford has found an owner attuned to its complexities and elegance,” he observes. As kitchen re-dos go, this one was unusually quick and painless. “It was a project we could live with,” Harrington says. “We created a kitchen in the utility closet,” Tomlinson adds. “A hotplate. It was like being students again . . . It was cool for about a week.” “Then it was like, ‘Let’s just eat out!’” Harrington laughs. No need to eat out now, especially when Tomlinson brings his talent for innovation to the kitchen. Summer 2017
“Eric cooks a lot,” Harrington says. “We entertain every weekend. My mom comes every Sunday.” The small pass-through, another feature of the kitchen remodel, allows him to keep one eye on pans simmering with halibut or a go-to specialty, Gordon Ramsay’s recipe for lamb shanks, and another on the large flat-screen TV. “So he can watch soccer,” Harrington explains, especially when his favorites, Manchester United or Liverpool, take the field. The flat-screen occupies a third of the large central room or “lounge-y area,” to use Tomlison’s phrase. Its interior glass wall overlooks the pool (sans ax murderer) and Zen garden beyond. Harrington likes the space “because the dogs are allowed in.” She stoops to stroke Snowy, the bull terrier-husky-shepherd mix, while Millie stretches out on the shag rug after a morning of digging, barely managing a lazy thump of her tail. The focal point of the room is a large, freestanding glass fireplace, flanked by fat columns wrapped in aluminum card. “They’re heavy stone,” Tomlinson says of the structures that extend down to the crawl space of the house. “They’d cost a fortune to take out . . . But look at my dining room table that I bought many years ago in Miami!” He points to the long, glass-topped piece — supported by four cylindrical, metallic legs. Across from it is a sitting area where the TV console once stood. Now an open, airy space with club chairs and sofas, it is perfectly suited for conversation or, in winter, enjoying the “massive flame” of the gas fireplace, as Harrington describes it (although with dual geothermal heating and cooling systems, a fire hardly seems necessary), or taking in the views through the back window wall. This opens onto a deck overlooking rhododendron and the screen of hardwoods extending to the distant ridge opposite, and just adjacent, the graceful waterfall feature, another contribution of the owners who laid the Zen garden. “The waterfall is beautiful and nice to relax and to entertain to,” Tomlinson says, quietly observing the gurgling flow that winds around mossy rocks and ferns beneath. Sadly, the koi it once carried did not survive, but a feeding station for the fish, installed outside guest bedroom door, remains. Tomlinson and Harrington will use these quarters while they embark on another remodeling project: reconfiguring the two master bedrooms and baths. Their original plan was to spruce things up a bit, perhaps with new fixtures. But when they sought the opinion of the designers at STITCH — the shop that designed Bailey Park in Innovation Quarter, the ARTivity on the Green downtown and a cluster of contemporary homes in the West Salem neighborhood — they got an unexpected verdict. The designers “didn’t think it was grand enough for the house,” Tomlinson says, even though one of the baths had been upgraded. But its layout is tight: Set side by side are a walk-in closet, then a vanity, then shower and tub (this, with a view to the outdoors and mirrors positioned at its head and foot, creating a bizarre fun-house effect). At one point, the couple thought about tearing out the bedrooms and installing a spa, but ultimately, it seemed a little too grand. Instead, with Timberwolf working its magic again, they will rebuild the existing suites, combining the two baths and closets into one, and reducing the size of one of the bedrooms, which will have its own bath and closet. “The project will take longer, because we’ll have to tear out concrete floors and move plumbing,” says Bradford. Meaning, months instead of weeks. Even so, Tomlinson and Harrington will carry on without fuss or flap. They’ll camp out in the guest suite for the duration, storing clothes and other belongings on temporary shelving in Tomlinson’s study (“I really don’t use it,” he confesses). No doubt, the two will continue to entertain on a grand scale, and why not? For this time of year, the woods are as lush as they are lovely and, yes, dark and deep, illuminated with the intermittent flash of fireflies and stardust . . . you know, the stuff of space oddities . . . and memories. Nancy Oakley is the senior editor of Seasons and its flagship, O.Henry magazine. SEASONS • STYLE & DESIGN 53
A Tuscan Life Von and Houston Kimbrough bring a European touch to Guilford County By Ross Howell Jr. • Photographs by Amy Freeman
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hree days of rain — and still it falls. Tufts of cloud shroud the ridge lines. Leaves glisten against black tree trunks. Two whitetail does amble across the road in front of my car, one heavy with fawn. Just ahead, water boils in a concrete spillway beneath the grassy slope of an earthen dam. I make my turn, passing between two stone gate guards. In the distance are woods and a bridge, brown water overflowing the banks of the stream. Leaves and sticks clot the swirling water. After I cross the bridge, a meadow opens onto rolling paddocks with white board fencing. To the right is a barn, to the left an equestrian building. Two young colts — one bay, one chestnut — flick their ears and raise their tails as the car approaches. They gallop to the fence, racing alongside as the car passes, then circle back to their mothers. The road winds up a gently sloping hill, its pastures magnificently green from all the rain. The sky is gray with mist. The rain has stopped for the moment. I pass a cottage on the left. I notice a wheelbarrow and big clay pots. The cottage is low-shouldered and très calme, as the French say. In fact, it looks like it would be in a painting of the South of France. But for me, as I park the car on the high knoll and step out onto a drive of pea gravel by a murmuring fountain and a flower garden overlooking rolling pastures, I’m reminded keenly of a place where I had spent quite a few years — Albemarle County, Virginia. As I make my way along the stone path to the house, the front door opens. My hosts, Von and Houston Kimbrough, are smiling, gesturing for me to come in out of the mist. Summer 2017
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A big, happy golden doodle darts through the door. He runs up to me and nuzzles my hand. “Reny!” the man in the door calls. With my new canine acquaintance, I make my way up the walk and step inside. I shake hands with the Kimbroughs. The doodle sniffs my pants leg. “Probably smells my dog,” I say. “Reny, that’s enough!” Von says. She smiles at me. “Short for ‘Renoir.’” “Your place reminds me so much of the countryside near Charlottesville,” I say. “We thought the same thing when we first saw it!” they exclaim in unison. The couple met in Bermuda during spring break of their senior year of college. Houston was a student of chemistry at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. Von was studying English with a minor in art at Hood College in Frederick, Maryland. “It was the same week Martin Luther King was assassinated,” Houston says. “Can you believe it?” Summer 2017
“We were married a year later,” Von says. As we talk, I learn that Houston was in medical school at the University of Virginia when I was there as an undergrad, and Von was teaching high school English. “Putting the doctor through med school,” she says. Houston finished his studies and residency in Charlottesville and practiced medicine in Nashville, Tennessee, for a while. Then the Kimbroughs returned to Charlottesville. They loved the central Virginia countryside and thought they might remain. Instead, Houston joined a urology practice in Greensboro. Nineteen years ago, the Kimbroughs decided they wanted to move out into the country. They began looking all over Guilford County. “We’d searched high and low,” says Von. “Then one day we drove down what was then a dirt road from Cedar Hollow Road and passed a horse barn. We saw the white fences and the horses — there were fewer back then — and it reminded us of Albemarle County.” SEASONS • STYLE & DESIGN 57
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“The horizon that opened up to us was so lovely and slowed our heart rate a bit,” Von continues. “Houston and I decided right then that we wanted to build here.” The land had been a dairy farm owned by the Cummings family. The Kimbroughs purchased 23 acres of open fields and woodlands. More land from the old farm was available. After they had selected their parcel, Houston and Von immediately asked friends to join them. “Several were interested, but only two couples, our best friends, actually, bought and built houses here. It was wonderful fun while it lasted, having our friends so nearby,” Von says. “Would you like a cup of coffee?” She brings me a mug and we sit at a dining table. The living area is open and spacious. The ceilings are vaulted. There are chairs, a big sofa, and a baby grand piano. The color of the walls is warm. It feels good to be in from the rain. Facing me is a marble fireplace, flanked by large wooden doors. Behind the panes of glass in the doors is tightly woven, weathered chicken wire. “Very French, aren’t they?” Von says. “They’re doors from an old penthouse in New York City. I saw them at a Greensboro antique store and had to have them, so I bought them and put them in storage. I designed this side of the room around them.” She pauses. “Here, let me show you something.” She goes to a cabinet and returns carrying a manila folder. She opens it and shows me a page cut out of a magazine. “Recognize it?” she asks. I study the page for a moment, then realize it’s the design of the home I’ve just entered. “When I saw this house in the magazine I knew it was the one I wanted to build,” Von says. “See? We only made slight changes to the façade. It reminded Summer 2017
me so much of the country houses we’d seen traveling in France and Italy. “I did the exterior and interior drawings myself,” she says. “Then I took them to a builder, so he could do architectural drawings we could build from.” The south wall of the great room overlooks the garden I walked by entering the house. It is nearly all windows. About two-thirds of the way up, just below the highest window, stretches the inscription “The skies proclaim the work of his hand.” Von tells me it’s Psalm 19:1. “The sky is so important to Houston and me,” she says. “Houston’s faith is deep, and he loves taking pictures of sunrises and sunsets. He has so many now I tell him he just can’t take any more.” She smiles. “But it’s wonderful, with all these windows, to be able to sit here and have such a glorious view of the sky.” Over our heads is a magnificent antique metal chandelier. “Mary Wells found that for me,” Von says. Wells is a well-known Greensboro antiques dealer. She opened Rhyne’s Corner Cupboard with her husband in 1973, and after their divorce, she started Mary’s Corner, which closed its doors this May. For many years, travel has been a constant with the Kimbroughs, especially travel to the continent. Memories of those travels are evident all through the house. Von shows me a mirror around a corner. “One of our daughters made it,” she says. “She made the frame from funeral Mass cards I’d found in a prayer missal at a market in Europe. And see? She antiqued the mirror.” Nearby are photos of the Kimbroughs, and photos with more and more children and grandchildren, in Salzburg, Austria; in Florence, Italy; in Paris. SEASONS • STYLE & DESIGN 59
“Von had traveled to Europe during college,” Houston says, “but I’d never been until 1989. We sort of did this Rick Steves thing. We packed light, avoided the tourist hotels, and spent as much time as we could with the locals. Then we started taking our kids, and they caught the travel bug, too. We try to do a big trip every other year.” Houston discovered that he especially enjoys doing the research for the trips, finding out-of-the way sites to visit, reconnoitering small hotels and bed-and-breakfasts, and neighborhood restaurants. “And I like reading about all the history,” he says. “I’m really excited about our next trip — we’re spending two weeks in Tuscany with the kids and our eight grandkids.” Von begins to give me a tour of the house. There are paintings everywhere. Most of them are oils she painted herself. She’s an accomplished artist, producing both landscapes and portraits. She ticks them off so quickly it’s hard to get the notes — “That’s Civita, in Italy, one of the first paintings I did. Oh, here, Roussillon. You saw it when you were in Provence, didn’t you say? Cinque Terre, Italy. Their boats! The colors are so beautiful. We started going there in the ’80s. Now the towns are overrun with tourists.” And there are English landscapes. And works by North Carolina impressionist painter Connie Winters, who, like the Kimbroughs, enjoys traveling in Provence and Tuscany. And paintings by Barbara Flowers — another impressionist — who has spent most of her life in a small village near the Rhine Valley in Germany. There are small sculpted cherubs. Delicately carved crosses. And more. Each piece is exquisite, and there are so many I’m feeling overwhelmed, which I share with Von.
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“Oh, I understand,” she laughs. “Once I had an interior designer working with me on the house, and she said, ‘Read my lips, Von. No more stuff!’” She shows me the master bedroom — like the other rooms, with big windows filled with light, even on this cloudy day. “Now to the studio,” she says. She leads me upstairs to a room overlooking the woods, with windows north and south. Canvases fill the room, some hanging, some propped against the walls. I’d noticed a chicken statue or figurine or two downstairs, and I comment on the big painting of a rooster tucked against a wall in the corner of the studio. “Oh, you see chicken paintings everywhere in France,” Von says. “I like doing them. And I like boats. There are so many pretty boats in Europe.” She pauses for a moment, looking at a painting on an easel. “And barns,” she continues. “I love barns. I’ve photographed them all over Summer 2017
Virginia and Pennsylvania. I’ve made Houston stop so many times on the Interstate to take a picture he asked me to promise not to take any more. I guess with barns I’m the way he is with his sunsets! But nobody these days seems to want to buy a painting of a barn.” I look out the back window. There’s a pea gravel terrace with a table and chairs, bordered by Southern wood ferns. Directly below the window is a garden fenced against deer. There are roses in the garden close to the house, then tomato plants, then vegetables. The bank falls away steeply into woods. I can see ferns here and there beneath the trees, and I catch a glimpse of a pasture just beyond the wood’s edge. “When I’m painting, I love looking out into the trees,” Von says. We come back downstairs. Just inside the front door is the library. “Houston’s room,” Von says. The dark wooden shelves are filled with books. SEASONS • STYLE & DESIGN 61
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Here and there are Navajo bowls, African art and items from the Caribbean. “I did some public health work on a Navajo reservation one summer,” Houston says. “I brought some things back. Here, this bowl by Frog Woman. She’s pretty well-known. See how she signs?” He turns the bowl to show the fat spotted frog that’s the artist’s signature. I point to another item on a shelf. “That?” he says. “I did some mission work in Haiti. And that? From Uganda.” We chat a little more, and I thank the Kimbroughs for their hospitality. I tell them how the land, the house, their artifacts, the paintings, and photographs have brought back so many happy memories of my own travels. Houston opens the door and walks me to my car. I turn and wave good-bye to Von. The mist has thickened. Houston points to a swimming pool I hadn’t noticed walking in. There’s a stone patio with beautiful plantings. “The grandkids love the pool,” he says. He tells me he’s the gardener, and apologizes for the length of the grass, which has been growing like crazy with Summer 2017
all the rain. He explains his tractor’s at the repair shop. Something broke in the steering mechanism. He tells me it’s supposed to be repaired by tomorrow. “I have a finish mower,” Houston says. “These fields will be as smooth as a golf course.” He points to the cottage I passed driving in. “People usually think that’s Von’s studio,” he says. “But see the doors in the back? It’s where I keep the tractor and equipment.” He muses for a moment. “Von thinks maybe we should give up this place,” Houston says softly. “She’s worried all the work’s become too much for me. But I enjoy being outside. I think I’m good for another few years. I’d go crazy in a townhouse, you know?” I take a deep breath, and look around. Yes, I certainly do know. h Ross Howell Jr. grew up on a farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains and completed his undergraduate studies in English and American Literature at the University of Virginia. SEASONS • STYLE & DESIGN 63
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HIDDEN DESIGN GEM
Proving His Metal
For Asheboro’s Everette Sheffield, a hobby is both business and art By Leah Hughes Photographs by Sam Froelich
“It’s sort of exploded here lately,” Sheffield says with a laugh. “Anytime there are more than 10 orders, I call that a frenzy.”
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here’s a diamond-plate mailbox on Cable Creek Road, made out of the kind of metal you see on trailers and toolboxes. It stands beside the second driveway off Old N.C. Highway 49 just west of Asheboro. A friendly character made from assorted metal parts and wearing a welding shield holds a sign that reads SheffiBilt Metal Fabrication. Down the short driveway stands a shop with a roof that looks a little like an oversize steel can turned on its side. A black and red quilt block hangs above the roll-up door. Inside, Everette Sheffield sits in a rolling chair with his wife, Julie, beside him. A “Got to Be NC Ag” banner hangs on the wall. You can find him out here roughly each weekday from 8 a.m. until noon. Sheffield taught agriculture mechanics at Southwestern Randolph High School for 31 years. He was a year-round employee, so he wasn’t afforded those carefree summer months. When he retired in 2014, SheffiBilt became his retirement hobby. Since then, it’s turned into a full-fledged small business. But he’s still a retiree, so if he wants to take off to the beach or the mountains or simply decides he wants to be somewhere else on a random Tuesday, he goes. And SheffiBilt closes. “It was a dream that manifested itself for 30 years,” Sheffield says. “I said, ‘Man, if I ever have a shop, this is what I want.’” Sheffield’s shop is compact. The 30-by-40-foot structure fits just right in his backyard. The 16-foot ceiling has a hoist, so he can maneuver heavy pieces more easily. His “big ticket” items are trailers, grills and smokers. In the back, his newest “toy” is a
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PlasmaCam, or computer-aided machine, that cuts fancy designs in pieces of metal. This past winter, that new machine helped him branch into the home décor market with metal ribbon wreaths, snowmen, and door and wall hangings with custom initials. “It’s sort of exploded here lately,” Sheffield says with a laugh. “Anytime there are more than 10 orders, I call that a frenzy.” That’s the thing about retirement hobbies: When you’re good at them, they can get out of hand. But Sheffield enjoys this new role, setting his own schedule, thinking up creative projects, and meeting new people. He’s always been a people person. Sheffield’s father taught agricultural education in Montgomery County, and Sheffield followed in his footsteps. After graduating from East Montgomery High School, he attended Sandhills Community College for two years and transferred to N.C. State University. He graduated from college in May 1984 and started at Southwestern Randolph on July 1. Everette and Julie were next-door neighbors growing up in Biscoe. Like many kids, it took them a while to realize that a childhood companion might actually make a lifelong mate. They started dating in college and married in 1985. Julie also worked at Southwestern Randolph, teaching business and technology classes. These days, she handles the books for SheffiBilt. And sometimes carries the boss title depending on whom you ask. What makes Sheffield successful at SheffiBilt is the same thing that made him an award-winning teacher in the classroom — he loves people. When he retired, Sheffield had two Southwestern Summer 2017
Randolph High School Teacher of the Year plaques. The second year he was also named Randolph County Teacher of the Year and was a regional finalist for North Carolina Teacher of the Year. But more important to him are the countless relationships he retains with his students. When Sheffield needed someone to construct his shop, he called former student Wes Gillispie. Gillispie graduated from Southwestern Randolph in 2002, the oldest of three brothers who all took classes with Mr. Sheffield. Gillispie uses skills he learned in Sheffield’s metal-fabrication classes in his daily work. His construction business, Wes Craft, works on everything from kitchen renovations and custom cabinetry to constructing metal buildings and trailers. “His classes were a lot of fun,” Gillispie says. “He’s just a big kid himself, so it was just like he was one of us.” Sheffield and Gillispie eat breakfast together at the Heritage Diner in Asheboro about once a month. Sheffield recently asked Gillispie about building a paint booth addition to his shop. “We call up each other and talk like any old friends,” Gillispie says. Kenneth Rogers taught with Sheffield in the agriculture department at Southwest for 28 years. Before that, he did his student teaching with Sheffield’s father. Rogers also retired in 2014 and went to work with Sheffield in his shop. As educators, they complemented each other. Sheffield preferred the mechanics side of things, while Rogers gravitated toward horticulture. Together they led the school’s Future Farmers of America program, which consistently performed well at state and national competitions and was active in the school and surrounding community. For fundraisers, they sold poinsettias and citrus fruit at Christmas and cooked hundreds of pounds of pork barbecue. “He has a heart for people,” Rogers says of Sheffield. “He was called to be a teacher. Some have that calling and some don’t, but he definitely does.” Sheffield passed on that agricultural teaching tradition to his daughter, Caroline. The Trinity High School teacher is now in her fourth year as a thirdgeneration agricultural educator. The N.C. State grad drew inspiration from both her father and her mother, majoring in agricultural education and minoring in agricultural business. She remembers her dad’s reaction when she told him her field of choice. “I remember him saying, ‘Are you sure?’” she says. “But deep down inside, I think he was thinking, ‘That’s a good choice.’” Caroline is impressed with her dad’s retirement-hobby-turned-small-business. She always thought he would tinker around with metal, but she didn’t imagine he would take it this far. “He loves the people,” she says. “He really gets to know his customers. You don’t see bigger companies doing that. That’s what makes him so special.” Each school day for 31 years, Mr. Sheffield held court in the hallway outside the shop at Southwestern Randolph. Between classes, students gathered around as he told stories and jokes. He undoubtedly had to reprimand someone every now and then, but those memories are few when compared with all the good ones. “I couldn’t think of a better job,” Sheffield says. “I considered those boys and girls I taught my buddies.” Those students can’t find him in the hallway at Southwest any longer, but they know that if they need him, they can pick up the phone or send him a Facebook message or even drop by his shop. It’s the one with the diamond-plate mailbox and the friendly character out front. h Leah Hughes writes from her family farm in Jackson Creek, a rural community in Randolph County. She is a proud alumna of Southwestern Randolph High School, class of 2006. Summer 2017
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Finishing touches make a home. The right gift makes an impression.
La Tisserande For home, garden and special occasions, La Tisserande combines European flare with American sensibility. InterIor DesIgn servIces AvAIlAble 1228 Reynolda Road • Winston-Salem, NC • (336) 529-6370
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SEASONS • STYLE & DESIGN 65
Pandora’s Manor HIGH PoInT
Boutique Bed & Breakfast
Pandora’s Manor is a carefully curated boutique Bed & Breakfast in High Point, North Carolina. Located in a 100+ year-old Southern home, the space has been expertly re-designed while maintaining its historic features. With a fully equipped kitchen, impressive dining room, and spacious common spaces we are ready for your wedding, private event, or a relaxing night stay.
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511 S Elm St. | Greensboro NC 27406 | 336.370.1050 areamod.com
Titans: Copland, Beethoven and Mahler
Sat., July 1 | Dana Aud. | Guilford College | 8:00 PM
Gerard Schwarz, conductor Horacio Gutiérrez, piano The Burlington Boys Choir | The North Carolina Boys Choir
Russian Tableaux
Sat., July 8 | Dana Aud. | Guilford College | 8:00 PM
Gerard Schwarz, conductor Midori, violin Hunter Bockes, saxophone
Rosen-Schaffel Competition Winner
The American Scene
Sat., July 15 | Dana Aud. | Guilford College | 8:00 PM
Gerard Schwarz, conductor Jon Manasse, clarinet series continues:
July 22 | Anne Akiko Meyers, violin, and July 29 | Awadagin Pratt, piano
SUMMER 2017
Tickets on Sale NOW Box Office 336.272.0160
JUNE 24-JULY 29
FOR MORE INFORMATION: EasternMusicFestival.org
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LIFE&HOME
PRIME RESOURCES
Hardwood Heaven
Woodworkers flock to Gibsonville’s Hardwood Store of North Carolina By Noah Salt
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Photograph by Sam Froelich ot long ago, in pure frustration, I phoned a friend who is an accomplished amateur woodworker, wondering if he had any idea where I might find a good source for hardwood lumber. My wife and I had recently refurbished a cozy den in the house we purchased in Greensboro last autumn and needed just a couple of key elements to complete the project: a hardwood countertop and companion hardwood shelving to replace the inexpensive Formica counter that had topped a builtin cabinet since the 1960s. My goal was to match the new wood to the beautiful golden oak parquet flooring of the room. I’d spent weeks traipsing through every big box home improvement store in in the Triad (or so it seemed), but the closest I could come to what I might be looking for was some expensive unfinished oak lumber that couldn’t be sold in custom lengths. My friend had a quick answer. “There’s only one place to go for what you want. It’s over in Gibsonville, a place called the Hardwood Store of North Carolina. You won’t believe the hardwood they keep in stock — stuff you’ve never even heard of. They can do almost any kind of custom job. It’ll blow your mind.” It sounded almost too good to be true. But during a guided tour of the small firm’s sprawling Summer 2017
40,000-plus-square-foot showroom with its marketing director, Cheryl Lewis, I’m quickly becoming a true believer, not to mention something of a gobsmacked shopper. Housed in a former home to the town’s textile mill on East Railroad Avenue, across the tracks from Gibsonville’s quaint main drag, the Hardwood Store of N.C. is indeed a woodworker’s dream come true. Essentially a resource warehouse, it carries at least 40 different varieties of traditional and exotic hardwoods typically priced well below what you’d find — if you’re lucky — at any popular home improvement store. The firm’s 10 helpful employees will not only sell you whatever amount of wood you need — no purchase is too small or too large — but also custom cut and finished basic pieces like the countertop I had in mind. “We have been called a grocery store for fine hardwood,” explains Lewis as she walks me through the warehouse where customers are indeed selecting choice hardwoods from designated bins and loading them onto their rolling carts for checkout in the showroom. All wood is priced and sold by the simple board foot. “We find that customers love the experience of touching the wood — kind of the way they would select produce in a grocery store,” Lewis adds with a laugh. “That’s not only permitted, it’s encouraged here.”
“Pecky cypress is so cool. It’s an old growth wood that comes from Florida that looks weathered due to a fungus that eats into the wood over the years.”
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LIFE&HOME Arranged in the bins around us are familiar old friends — cherry, maple, mahogany, walnut, hickory, poplar, and red and white oak — and slightly more unusual varieties like basswood, alder and cypress. Then there are flatout exotics I’ve never heard of: purple heartwood, bubinga, wenge, canarywood and sapele, most of them from Africa and South America. “Check this out,” Lewis suggests, pausing to show a curiously distressed wood called pecky cypress. “Pecky cypress is so cool. It’s an old growth wood that comes from Florida that looks weathered due to a fungus that eats into the wood over the years,” Lewis explains. “Don’t you just love it? People use in everything from furniture to flooring. Thanks to [HGTV star] Joanna Gaines and her love of shiplap, pecky cypress is really big right now.” Two decades ago, Lewis and her husband, David, discovered the thennewly opened Hardwood Store of N.C. David is a skilled woodworker who makes fine custom furniture for Triad designers, among other clients, and simply couldn’t find the kind of high quality hardwoods he desired through traditional lumberyards. “We started out as customers and I wound up working here,” Lewis explains, diving into the tale of how company founder Hilton Peel had worked for years in the conventional lumber business before sensing a potentially lucrative niche market of hobbyist woodworkers, professional builders and and custom furniture makers, and venturing out on his own. Not long ago, THSNC celebrated its 20th anniversary in business and invited Graham resident Roy Underhill, the star of Public Broadcasting’s The Woodwright’s Shop, who greeted fellow customers to “talk shop.” It’s an indication of why THSNC has quietly become the go-to resource for fine wood craftsmen, cabinetmakers and custom builders across the region. Not surprisingly, the company does a brisk business in custom cabinetry, molding, veneers, hardwood flooring, stair treads and decking of every sort.
China . Crystal . Silver . Collectibles
Patrons have come from 46 states and several foreign countries. The firm’s hardwoods have been used in restaurants and stores throughout the state — even in handrails custom-made for UNC Hospital in Chapel Hill. One inspired customer used hardwood from the store to build himself a boat that cruises around Lake Norman today. “We have lots of stories like that,” allows Lewis as we finish up our walking tour. “I particularly like the guys who come in here to find wood for clocks or the grandfathers who make chests for their grandchildren from aromatic cedar.” She stops to reflect: “Woodworkers have a personal relationship with wood. They can spend hours in here searching for the right pieces, touching, feeling, even smelling the wood.” At a bin nearby, a rangy T-shirted fellow is carefully selecting pieces of mahogany and having just such an experience. His name is Michael Fels, an artist and art professor from Elon University, it turns out, who is buying pieces of hardwood for a custom cap to a cistern at a greenhouse gallery on the campus. “This place is remarkable,” Fels enthuses. “The real challenge is to settle on one kind of wood. I come here all the time. The quality is so terrific.” After my own patient consideration of stock, at Lewis’s suggestion, I settle on a countertop and shelving made from finished white oak. “That way,” she says, “You can stain it to match your oak flooring and have something that looks like its own work of custom-made furniture.” I place the order and drive home one happy fella. h Noah Salt’s dogs love his new countertop, especially when treats are left on it. The Hardwood Store of North Carolina is located at 106 East Railroad Avenue, Gibsonville. Hours of Operation: Monday through Friday, 8 a.m.–4:30 p.m.; Saturday, 8 a.m.– Noon. Info: (336) 449-9627 or hardwoodstore.com.
2921 Battleground Avenue, Suite E • Greensboro, NC 27408
callalilyquilts.com | 336-763-0528
(800) REPLACE | replacements.com 68 SEASONS •
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From Our Kitchen To Your Table For Over 25 Years MOrAViAN ChiCKeN Pie Salem Kitchen prepares Gourmet to Go meals. Our location in Winston-Salem, off Miller Street, offers a remarkable variety of fresh and frozen, chef prepared entrees, sides, soups, salad, breads and desserts packaged to go. Salem Kitchen also offers full service catering. Visit the gift shop at Salem Kitchen for an extensive selection of tables linens, featuring April Cornell. We offer a variety of gift items including La Cadeaux melamine, Caldrea products and Nouvelle candles. Check out the wine shop while you’re visiting.
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50 Miller Street • WinSton-SaleM, nC 27104 • 336.722.1155 • WWW.SaleMkitChen.CoM
Summer 2017
(336) 339-7757 | kimsmathis@gmail.com SEASONS • STYLE & DESIGN 69
LIFE&HOME
THE ARCHITECT’S SON
As a reminder, he left a charred tree in a prominent place on his terrace. It was many years before I realized it was a symbol of fire’s power to cleanse and renew.
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A Natural Order of Design Remembering Bob Conner, architect By Peter Freeman Photograph by Amy Freeman
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ne of my earliest memories is what we called “the big fire.” It was next door. I was no more than 3 or 4, and my biggest impressions were the wailing sirens and the raging flames that overtook the house . . . and I can faintly remember the firemen. My brother, nearly three years my senior, remembers more. He recalls that Mr. Conner came over to use the phone, not once but several times. Although agitated, Mr. Conner was collected and polite. Tugging at his beard as well as his suspenders, he apologized for having to use the phone over and over again. My brother was afraid that the fire would spread through the woods and set our house on fire. It burned for what to me seemed to be the rest of the day.
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As the firetrucks pulled away, very little of the Conners’ house remained but its absence made a big impact. We humans have a complicated relationship with fire. Of the classical elements, earth, air, fire and water, fire may be the hardest to command. But Robert “Bob” Conner the architect — and our neighbor — had a unique way of coming to terms with the elements. Bob was not just an architect. He he was also a naturalist and an environmentalist. He was passionate about the elements, and it showed in his architecture. And in time, the fire that destroyed his own creation seemed to be part of the natural order of things. Mr. Conner rebuilt his house almost exactly as he had originally designed it. As a reminder, he left a charred tree in a prominent place on his Summer 2017
terrace. It was many years before I realized it was a symbol of fire’s power to cleanse and renew. Bob Conner was a forward-looking man. He embraced the progressive American Modernism being practiced after the Second World War. He attended Duke University and graduated from N.C. State at a time when new directions in architecture were encouraged. He was part of an exciting generation of North Carolina architects and practiced with the venerable High Point firm of Voorhees and Everhart before striking out on his own. Bob’s commercial architectural works — Ragsdale High School, Ragsdale Junior High and the B’Nai Israel Synagogue — are widely regarded as fine examples of the high level of Modern architecture that proliferated in flourishing, mid-century High Point. But it is the design of his own home that best reflects the personality of Bob Conner. To say Bob practiced Green architecture before it was in vogue would be an understatement. Bob lived Green. He took long walks in the woods. He worked determinedly for environmental causes and he certainly looked the part, sporting a luxuriant beard, flannel walking pants, suspenders and at times, a walking stick. He and his wife, Lib, were Friends of the State Parks, founding members of the Conservation Council of North Carolina and avid travelers. As a student of architecture, I knew that the Conner house was different, in fact special. Nestled in the woods, it possesses a symbiotic connection to its site. The house has a light environmental imprint. There are no organized lawns or over-considered landscaping. It simply emerges from its surroundings. The house is clad with rough-hewn, lapped cedar siding, an aesthetic complement to the wooded backdrop. The low-slung roof rises from the north to the south in a distinctly Modern fashion, opening up to
the world and to the sun in a way that reminds me of Bob Conner’s infectious laugh. The house is oriented so that its long side is situated along the northsouth axis. Warm winter light penetrates the expanse of south-facing windows. The roof overhangs, providing protective shade in the heat of summer. Bob understood the sun and the wind. The house, originally designed in 1956, was built with no air conditioning. A high-perched cantilevered porch was designed with three screened sides. The porch design takes advantage of natural cross breezes and allows air to flow from below to cool the floor structure. Bob was not a big fan of air conditioning and was known to sleep on the cool porch. His home was like a treehouse, and fulfilled an ancient urge to be among the tree canopy. When the original house was consumed by fire, Bob Conner understood the natural order of things. Like a natural wildfire that fosters new growth, Bob would rebuild, regenerate. Ever the environmentalist, he used repurposed bricks from a demolished downtown building for the renewed foundation. According to his daughter Susan Conner Levin, Bob said that he “got a chance to fix a couple of things I missed on the first go round.” Bob Conner left the Earth he so loved in 2007, but his aerie in the woods remains, a constant reminder of the continuity of life. Or as F. Scott Fitzgerald so eloquently put it in The Great Gatsby: “And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.” h Peter Freeman is a practicing architect with Freeman Kennett Architects and remains a rascally Emerywood Drive neighbor in the Wendover Hills subdivision of High Point.
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72 SEASONS •
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1107 N. MAIN STREET • HIgHpoINT • 336.889.0400
www.aboutfacedayspa.com
Summer 2017
LIFE&HOME
Richard Mendenhall Homeplace
OUR TOWNS
Tucked Away Just Far Enough An insider’s guided tour of Jamestown By Ogi Overman Photographs by Sam Froelich
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eloved real estate agent, civic booster, mandolinist and man about town, Bow Stafford, used to call it “the pivot point of the Triad.” Situated and serving as a buffer between Greensboro and High Point, and a straight shot down U.S. Highway 311 to Winston-Salem, Jamestown is, incongruous as it seems, both off the beaten path and dead in the middle of it. As Stafford asserts, one can pivot in any direction and quickly wind up in a major city, which Jamestown clearly is not — because its 3,000-some citizens want it that way. No matter which direction one is headed, the character, charm and historical significance of Jamestown reveals itself immediately. I know this personally, as I was the editor of the Jamestown News from 2006 to 2013 and traveled these roads daily. I spent countless hours talking to its citizens, from painters and plumbers to small business owners and captains of industry to two of its favorite sons, former Gov. Pat McCrory and current Guilford County Sheriff BJ Barnes. I made lifelong friends there and memories I’ll cherish forever. So, let’s roll, shall we? From High Point to the southwest, the first sight one will see is the Richard Mendenhall Homeplace (Jamestown was named for his father, James), which is on the National Register of Historic Places. For a burg steeped in history — Quaker and otherwise — the property is its most hallowed ground, in part for its role as a stopover on the Underground Railroad.
Summer 2017
From Greensboro to the northeast, one must pass under a railroad trestle known far and wide as “Lydia’s Bridge.” Ghost hunters visit periodically, hoping to catch a glimpse of the famous specter, attired in her prom or wedding dress, trying to catch a ride on a foggy evening. As the legend goes, once the passing motorist picks her up and takes her to her destination, she has by then disappeared. The befuddled Good Samaritan then discovers that Lydia had passed away years before. OK, no one I know ever saw her, but by now Lydia is a part of Jamestown lore, so let’s let sleeping ghosts lie. Venturing closer to downtown, one of my favorite vistas is a white fence corralling several horses and the finely manicured acreage of Magnolia Farm, home of the George Ragsdale family, the seventh generation of the patriarchal family. Across the street reside his brother Will and father Billy, a five-term mayor and current town councilman (who, ironically, in 2015 beat incumbent Will for the seat by a handful of votes after sitting out three terms). Coming from I-85 Business to the south, I’ve passed the entrance to the village surrounding Oakdale Cotton Mill a million times. Until finally being shuttered a few years ago, it was the longest continuously running hosiery mill in the state. Founded in 1865 and bought by Joseph S. Ragsdale in 1873, it was by far Jamestown’s largest employer for many generations. Just up the road sits Oakdale School, a one-room schoolhouse for first- and second-graders that was built for children of the SEASONS • STYLE & DESIGN 73
LIFE&HOME mill village and looks much the same today as it did back then. One of my best Jamestown buddies, singing cowboy Jerry Campbell, attended Oakdale School, and says there are still a couple dozen of his classmates left. From there they graduated to the “Old School,” a neoclassical structure built in 1915 on a hill in the heart of town. It has since been renovated and saved from destruction, serving as the town library since 1988. Finally, from the north, College Road passes through an upscale, brick-sidewalked neighborhood and dead-ends at Main Street. The first sight one sees is an abandoned service station, considered an eyesore to uninformed passers-by, but to locals a fond reminder of the colorful Hughes family and still referred to affectionately as “Peanut’s,” a reference to the last of the Hughes who finally closed the place around 2008. Beside it sits a lovely, century-old, two-story gray house, originally home to the Wrike family, which sold it to the aforementioned Bow Stafford, who used it as his realty office. His estate then sold it to the Jamestown News, which in April put it up for sale and moved its scaled-back operations to Adams Farm. I still get a little pang in my heart every time I pass by it. I hope whoever buys it maintains it in its natural beauty. All these roads lead to the tiny yet classic downtown, a winding, slightly inclined, four-block stretch from Town Hall to Jamestown Elementary School. From the outside, it seems not to have changed much since World War II, but in reality it has. Businesses, mostly mom-and-pops, come and go, but within the last five years, once-sleepy little Jamestown has developed a vibrant nightlife. I’d like to think I had something to do with that, but, truth is, it developed organically.
Southern Roots restaurant started the trend, followed in rapid succession by Potent Potables, capitalizing on the craft beer movement, and The Deck at River Twist, an eye-catching outdoor bar-music venue that figured out a way to stay open year-round. In close proximity to each other, all three offer live music and provide a pulsating scene not unlike downtowns much larger. Wine and Design, where groups turn blank canvases into two-hour works of art, adds to the after-hours ambience. More recently, two more restaurants, an oyster bar and a bakery-coffee shop, have opened, all within easy walking distance. They complement a half dozen locally owned retail shops, which can make for an enjoyable afternoon of browsing. Interestingly, almost all are owned by women. One of the selling points Bow Stafford and his successors would no doubt point out to potential newcomers is the Jamestown Park Golf Course. Jamestown holds the distinction of being the smallest town in America that boasts a municipally owned, 18-hole golf course. Recently renovated and upgraded, it may not compete with nearby Sedgefield or Grandover, but it holds its own with virtually any other links in the Triad. One year, on the Wednesday before the Wyndham Championship, PGA star Bubba Watson came out and gave a driving demonstration. He’s probably the longest hitter on the tour, and some of those balls have still not been found. Another amenity is downtown’s Wrenn-Miller Park, across the street from Town Hall. Completed a couple of years ago, it is an inviting gathering space for concerts, picnics and special events, as well as a tribute area for the town’s many armed forces veterans. I watched it take shape from the front porch of the newspaper office, and it is something the town is justifiably proud of.
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www.artofbeingsingle.com The Art of Being Single hosts social gatherings for single professionals in the Triad area. Cocktail Parties to Black tie events. Summer 2017
LIFE&HOME A sometimes overlooked part of Jamestown’s charm is its miles of brick sidewalks, not only downtown but through many of the neighborhoods, even as far as Ragsdale High School. Accentuated by dozens of turnof-the-century replica gaslights, a stroll through town evokes memories of a bygone era. And that too is by design. Priding itself on its history, the town council years ago passed a restrictive — some business owners would say overly restrictive — sign ordinance that limits size, lighting, height and placement. Jamestown will never be known as J-Vegas, despite the lively weekend scene and frequent food truck rodeos. While Jamestown was settled in 1762 and founded in 1816, it was not until 1947 that it was incorporated. Mayor Bill Ragsdale Jr. (Billy’s father) had the foresight to realize that eventually the burg would be annexed by either High Point or Greensboro and called for a referendum, which, if passed by 90 percent of the citizens, would allow for it to be incorporated. Obviously, it passed. Old-timers will jokingly tell you that the most important date in Jamestown history is August 11, 1961. That is the date the state Alcoholic Beverage Control Board approved, by a vote of 223 to 190, the opening of an ABC store just inside the city limits. It opened on December 16 of that year, just in time for Christmas, making many residents of dry High Point very happy. And Jamestown residents even happier, as the revenue generated from that store essentially paid for the golf course and the new Town Hall, as well as paying off the debt for the water and sewer system. For a town of just under 3 square miles, Jamestown may rightly lay claim to many alluring features nearby. It is home to Guilford Technical Community College and the Piedmont Environmental Center. It boasts
the longest stretch of greenway in the state, and the High Point City Lake is a boaters’ and fishermans’ paradise. The Deep River, which bisects what is still sometimes referred to as Old and New Jamestown, has become a popular put-in point for canoeists. While it may never become a destination for anyone other than history buffs, diners, curio shoppers and weekend revelers, this pleasant little village seems perfectly content with its place in the scheme of things. It has all the necessities and amenities found in a big city, with far less congestion, crime, traffic, noise and light pollution, plus a lower tax rate. And, most important, welcoming and friendly people who take pride in their community and its denizens. Again, I know this personally and can prove it by one event. A few months after I left the paper, my wife, who is wheelchair-bound with multiple sclerosis, became eligible for a new chair. Problem was, our insurance only picked up a portion of the cost. So a group of citizens, led by Kelly Irvin, owner of French Twist Beauty Salon, organized a benefit for us. They titled it “Jamestown Rocks and Janet Rolls,” and it featured 10 bands at two venues, a double-decker bus shuttling patrons back and forth, both a live and a silent auction, bake and wristband sale, and an outpouring of love like nothing we’ve ever experienced. The daylong benefit raised $10,000, which was more than enough to pay for the chair. Perhaps Bow had it wrong. Instead of the pivot point, maybe this is paradise. h Ogi Overman writes about music, art and culture for Seasons’ sister magazine, O.Henry, among other Triad publications.
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Summer 2017
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Summer’s Top Ten
Tomatoes, grilled meats and outdoor music round out this summer’s events By Annie Ferguson
1
Great American Cookout
Gourmet Barbecue Sauce will be grilling — and saucing up local viands in this meat-and-greet event. Live music and games for kids round out the festivities. Plates are $5 and include one choice of meat, slaw and grilled vegetables. June 17, 9 a.m.–noon, Greensboro Farmers Curb Market, 501 Yanceyville Street, Greensboro. www.gsofarmersmarket.org
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Southern Cocktail Competition
Sunset Paddles
Taste test and vote on six ice-cold cocktails in the heat of summer. The winning mixologist earns a set of hand-blown glasses. Pair your libations with good eats and browse the food-themed auction with experiences such as learning to make home brews and throw pizza dough. June 21, 5:30–8:30 p.m., GreenHill Center for NC Art, 200 North Davie Street, Greensboro. RSVP at www. greenhillnc.org/good-eats-drinks
Paddle under the setting sun on picturesque Burlington lakes. A guide will provide basic instruction and lead the group out onto the lake and into surrounding coves. Fee includes guides, boat rental and paddles. Fee: $20 per person or $8 if you provide your own boat. Registration required. Tuesdays, June 27—August 29. Times vary, Guilford Mackintosh Lake or Stoney Creek Marina, Burlington. burlingtonnc.gov/1323/Outdoor-Programs#Sunset
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Pops Concert
Ken Kennedy joins the Piedmont Wind Symphony for a pops concert featuring favorites from the Frank Sinatra repertoire, as well as patriotic and film music. Refreshments and food will be available for purchase at this Arts Council Winston-Salem/ Forsyth County event. July 2, 6 p.m., Triad Park, Kernersville. intothearts.org/summer-parks-series
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25th Moravian Music Festival
Don’t miss this weeklong festival held just once every four years. Hundreds of musicians descend on Winston-Salem to share new and historic Moravian music. Simultaneous with some performances, separate events and classes will be featured for children. July 23–29. Home Moravian Church, 529 South Church Street, Winston-Salem. www.moravianmusicfestival.org Summer 2017
LIFE&HOME
6
Peach Day and Recipe Contest
Feeling peachy? Come on out to the Piedmont Triad Farmers Market for a day full focuing on this classic summer stone fruit, including plenty of tasting opportunities and a recipe contest. July 14, Piedmont Triad Farmers Market, 2914 Sandy Ridge Road, Colfax. http://www.ncagr.gov/markets/ facilities/markets/triad/promos.htm
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A Curated Tour of a Tropical Garden
Come July and August, the tropical garden at Paul J. Ciener Botanical Garden is exploding with the leaves of large bananas and elephant ears that thrive in summer heat and humidity, along with the flowers of ginger and canna lilies and other exotic plants. Adrienne Roethling, garden curator, guides guests through the first garden planted here. $5 donation for non-members. August 10, Paul J. Ciener Botanical Garden, 215 South Main Street, Kernersville. www.cienerbotanicalgarden.org
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Tomato Sandwich Festival
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Bee Friendly to Bees Day
Celebrate National Honey Bee Day, which was started to build community awareness of the bee industry, with children’s activities, learning stations and vendors. August 19, Guilford Cooperative Extension, 3309 Burlington Road, Greensboro. guilford.ces.ncsu.edu/event/29738/ bee-friendly-to-bees-day-2017-national-honey-bee-day/
The tomato sandwich is a classic Southern food. Decide which ’wich tastes best — tough duty, considering the sandwich fixins’ are locally sourced. Sandwich fixins’ are locally sourced. All tomatoes are donated by the farm at TS Designs; the delicious, toasted bread by Simple Kneads Gluten-Free; and the mayonnaise by Duke’s Mayonnaise. Sandwiches are $5 each and all proceeds benefit downtown Burlington. July 28, 11:30 a.m. – 2 p.m., or until the tomatoes run out! Company Shops Market, 268 East Front Street Burlington. uwalamance.org
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Home Grown Arts Festival
Local artisans set up on the lawn of Körner’s Folly to showcase and sell their creations. Peruse this free festival and also enjoy a tour of the historic home. Regular admission applies to tours of Körner’s Folly. Aug. 26, 9 a.m.–2 p.m., 413 South Main Street, Kernersville. Summer 2017
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Summer 2017
LIFE&HOME
THE LANGUAGE OF HOME
Pergola-tory
More than a trellis, not quite a bower, the pergola is somewhere in between By Noah Salt
A
pergola is a garden feature forming a shaded walkway, passageway, or sitting area of vertical posts or pillars that usually support cross-beams and a sturdy open lattice, often upon which woody vines are trained. It is a structure usually consisting of parallel colonnades supporting an open roof of girders and cross rafters; sometimes (mistakenly) it is called an arbor or a trellis. The best pergolas seem to echo the design of classical Greek and Roman architecture, modest temples meant to link man to over-arching nature, not surprising given that the origin of the word is from late Latin, referring to a projected or extended eave. The common English usage reportedly derives from Italian, mentioned in1645 by John Evelyn, a rival diarist to London’s Samuel Pepys, at the cloister of Trinità y dei Monti in Rome. Evelyn supposedly introduced the word in the English context in 1654 when, in the company of the Fifth Earl of Pembroke, he watched the coursing of hares from a “pergola” built on the downs near Salisbury. Evelyn is best known for his vast knowledge of trees, a serious gardener who penned the first known book on the air pollution problems of London in 1664. Following the Great Fire of London in 1666, he presented a rival plan to that of Christopher Wren for the rebuilding of the city, but it was rejected as “too complex” by Charles II.
Summer 2017
Owing to the naturalistic movements of the 18th and 19th centuries, pergolas and other artificial garden structures fell out of fashion for a time until Sir Edward Lytens and Gertrude Jekyll introduced lavishly planted pergolas at Kew and other notable formal British gardens. Their shaded pathways in formal gardens illustrated the versatility of pergolas, triggered a popularity that has never waned. During the height of our intense Southern summers, a leafy pergola overgrown with jasmine or Lady Banks roses can provide a welcome respite from the heat, a fine place to pause and sit for a spell under arches of green or beside a pool of water, or simply an excellent avenue into the heart of a summer garden. In our many travels through other people’s gardens, we’ve seen miniature Greek temples wreathed with everything from scuppernong grapes to ancient wisteria vines, an architectural element that done well seems to naturally project the life of a house into the garden. A casual stroll through “pergolas” on Pinterest illustrates how a smartly an integrated pergola can add the softening grace of nature, whereas a boxy, cheaply kitted-out affair looks a bit like a child’s unfinished toy, pointlessly attached to the patio. A beautiful pergola takes its own sweet time to reach proper flowering is the message — reminding us that life may be busy, but nature simply cannot be rushed. h
During the height of our intense Southern summers, a leafy pergola overgrown with jasmine or Lady Banks roses can provide a welcome respite from the heat.
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HOMEWORDS
Shelter from the Storm A porch with friends and a shower bring on a flood of memories By Nancy Oakley
“L
et’s have a glass of wine outside where we can listen to it rain.” A friend is summoning a group of us to the wraparound porch of the rambling West End house in WinstonSalem that she owns — and where I recently became a tenant. It hasn’t actually started raining, but at that time of day between dusk and nightfall — the fabled “blue hour” so treasured among painters and photographers — the air is shedding the heavy, languid heat of the afternoon for slightly cooler temperatures that carry a fresh, grassy scent. “It smells like rain,” someone comments. We have taken our places on the wooden rockers, wrought-iron chairs and the porch’s wide railings flanked by massive Ionic columns, while my friend’s husband starts the gas grill on the concrete landing below. Amid the conversational hum we hear them, the first drops of rain scattering on the leaves of the shrubbery by the house. And then, “CRAAACK!” The first clap of thunder stuns us all into silence. And almost immediately, a streak of lightning, which stirs us back into conversation. “Would somebody get me an umbrella?” shouts my friend’s husband from below. “Should we go inside?” another asks nervously. At this, I suppress giggle, for it reminds me of a similar summer evening in Greensboro, when as a child I lay alongside my elder sisters, all of us ordered into the in the hallway of our family’s ranch house, trying to read while the elements thrashed and crackled outside. Our mother, who bore an anxious expression, the same one that came over her on airplanes, justified our unlikely perch. “The National Safety Council says you should stay away from windows during thunderstorms,” she said. “The hall is the safest place to be.” “And what other pearls of wisdom does the Great Oracle have to offer? asked my elder sister Margaret, the sarcastic, smart alecky one. Mom didn’t miss a beat. “That you should unplug the TV, because it could catch fire, and you should stay away from the bathroom, because the plumbing consists of iron pipes, so when lightning strikes ground you could get electrocuted.” “Tell that to the dog.” This, from my eldest sister, Katherine, the argumentative one, who had tried to coax our terrier mix from the cool tiles of the bath we all shared. “Tell that to Dad,” I chimed in. For our father, who’d long eschewed the advice of, shall we say, the National Safety Council, had plugged the TV back in and was watching a golf match, oblivious to the lashing rain and flashes of lightning outside. “Your father never listens,” Mom declared, irritation momentarily
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overtaking anxiety. “He can’t help it. He’s a dayumn Yankee!” (From the smart aleck again, this time, affecting her best Scarlett O’Hara impersonation.) But her wisecrack held a kernel of truth: Dad did grow up in the Northeast, where, yes, there are summer storms, but they are not like the storms in the South, or more specifically, the violent ones my mother witnessed in Depression-era Greensboro. She would talk of lightning rods (early ones were called Franklin rods, after Ben Franklin, who invented them). Affixed to housetops and barns, these long metal rods were meant to deflect the electrical current of lightning to prevent fires. But sometimes they didn’t. Then there was the story about the man who was caught on the links during a summer storm — in the days when golf shoes had metal spikes. “He got struck by lightning and still has little round burn marks on the bottoms of his feet from the spikes on his shoes” she would caution us, whenever a storm approached. Our mother’s justifiable fear of thunderstorms was counterbalanced by our father’s fascination with them. An even earlier memory was not of that darkened hallway in the Greensoro ranch house, but of its living room floor, where I sat next to my dad, his feet clad in white, fuzzy wool socks. We watched out the front windows while one shaft of lighting after another struck the front yard, as if Zeus himself had hurled them with his all-powerful arm. And young as I was, at the time, I felt no fear of the racket outside, even with the knowledge that the house had no lightning rods. Maybe it was my father’s unflinching gaze at nature’s spectacle, as if he were literally calculating the speed of the lightning, or the sight of his fuzzy wool socks that comforted me. More likely, it was the comfort of the living room floor — for it was here that I played with building blocks and dolls, or filled in coloring books. Or in those days long before personal electronic devices, where we as a family listened to records and watched TV, where my sisters and I practiced the piano, opened presents at Christmastime and looked on as my parents hosted bridge parties and New Year’s Eve celebrations. No, the lightning could not hurt us here. Perhaps that’s why, on this summer evening, on an elegant wraparound porch among convivial friends, I sense that thunder and lightning and wind and rain can somehow be comforting. And as the drops diminish one by one and the lightning becomes a soft flicker, the thunder a muted rumble, night falls. And as clouds part, a star or two emerges. In the morning, everything will be green. h Nancy Oakley is the senior editor of Seasons. Summer 2017
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