Metal

Doing Dallas

The Library on Parry Avenue with books, collectibles, ceramics, and silver on display.

The Library on Parry Avenue with books, collectibles, ceramics, and silver on display.

I’m the guy that moved into the loft directly across the street from Fair Park in Dallas the day the State Fair of Texas commenced. For the next three weeks, it was mayhem down here. Not to worry, I was a prisoner of the loft anyway, getting everything from the TPRB office and the Inwood Manor condo that had been in storage in Houston for past six months sorted and stowed. It was all the more important that everything be just so, since the loft is my home AND my livelihood. That it is so beautiful is due to the talent and hard work of interior designer and dear friend, Alice Cottrell, and her trusted jack of all trades and all-around miracle worker, Steven Hauser.
The loft is “done” and I’ve been working to launch my new endeavor – selling artist and architect designed objects; original art and editions; vintage ceramics; collectibles; rare art, photography, and fashion books; fashion and design collaborations; and commissioned objects by Texas artists to interior designers and directly to clients. I’ve gone to every event [“He’d go to the opening of a drain!”], talked to everyone, and have had enough delicious meetings/meals with fantastic people to need bigger pants. With a job providing thoughtfully chosen accessories for Alice’s latest Museum Tower project under my belt, some press coming out in January [fingers crossed] and a collaboration with the Donghia showroom in Dallas [see my next post], things are coming along. This gig is certainly not a “sure thing,” but people and the universe keep stepping in just when I wonder if it “will ever happen.” It has happened. It is happening.

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Stern Expression

Robert A. M. Stern's "Century" Candlestick for Swid Powell, 1984

Robert A. M. Stern’s “Century” Candlestick for Swid Powell, 1984


Robert A.M. Stern is perhaps the most prominent representative of New Urbanism and New Classical Architecture in this country. In much of his work – from pre-war on steroids buildings for potentates in Manhattan to shingled 10,000 square foot “cottages” in the Hamptons – his muscular approach to contemporary classicism is evident.
Swid Powell, founded in 1982 by Nan Swid and Addie Powell, produced innovative housewares designed by the foremost architects of the 1980s, including Frank Gehry, Richard Meier, and Robert A. M. Stern, among others. Executed in silver, ceramics and glass, these objects have in many cases, become design classics. None more so than Stern’s 1984 “Century” fluted column candlestick.
One may never have the opportunity to live in one of Stern’s iconic towers or homes, but one can live with this hefty silver-plated column, the perfect distillation of Stern’s approach to design on a decidedly more manageable scale.

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