I spent the last two weeks, about five hours a day, cleaning out our childhood home, getting it ready to sell.
Here's a photo of my sister and me (dressed inexplicably like little Dutch girls) in the front patio of my mother's house, in better days. It was the early 1960s and my mother's roses were blooming, there was still grass in the yard, and the foundation hadn't yet cracked.
After my father died in 1972, my mother spent the next 20 years paying off the house, working, and putting three kids through SMU. The house almost fell down around her -- she stubbornly refused to move, and lived in the house until she died recently at age 81.
My sister and brother, both who live out of town, came in to help box up more than 40 years worth of memories -- much of it disintegrating in the closets. I had to wear a mask to breathe.
We found hundreds of sacks full of yellowing bills and bank statements (she even kept my grandmother's bills and bank statements going back to the 1950s). But we also found some beautiful things. Here are some of my favorites:
My grandmother's hat boxes.
And hats. My brother, a mountain man who loves to kayak and camp and hike, shocked us all by taking a bunch of them back to Minnesota with him. He's going to display them in Plexiglas boxes.
His sentimentality didn't extend to old family photos like this one, which he wanted to toss because there weren't any names on it to identify who the people are. "How do we even know they're our relatives?" he exclaimed. I think it's pretty obvious. These are our hillbilly great, great whatevers from Kentucky.
My mother was fascinated with Henry Moore after he came to Dallas in the late 1970s and set up shop at an airplane hangar for two weeks, to work on a huge sculpture for
City Hall. We all went to see him work on it one Sunday afternoon when they opened the hangar to the public. Shortly after, she bought this beautiful maquette at the Dallas Museum of Art.
We also found a few scandalous things. Such as a pair of silk scarves with the Confederate flag on them. These must be from the 50s or 60s. My mother, who was born and raised (like my Dad) in Arkansas, was proud of her Southern heritage. When they first came to Dallas in the 50s, I'm not sure she'd really ever met anyone from New York. It might as well have been a foreign country. She was prejudiced, yes, not against blacks, but against anything Yankee. We were forbidden to put ketchup on hotdogs because "it was Yankee" (I liked ketchup.) And we were admonished if we said "dinner" instead of "supper", because, that, too, was "Yankee". I'm making her sound backwards, and by todays standards it would be. But she was actually a liberal, long before being liberal was popular.
We also found these 38 Specials on the top shelf in her closet. I was shocked. The top one must have been my father's, because it is marked as a service issue. Back in Arkansas, my mother was really good at using a hunting rifle, and I'm sure she felt OK about having these guns in the house. They weigh more than she did, I think, by the time she died.
More unmarked family photos. We found thousands of old photos, many of them stuck between old papers and bills. I'm keeping them all, in hopes of identifying them one day.
A pair of wonderful 1950s era liquor bottles. These were special promotional bottles that liquor stores sold and held bourbon or rum, from what I remember my mother telling me. My mother loved cocktails.
This pocket sized Bible has a strong metal cover. My grandmother Marie gave it to my Dad when he entered the Army, to wear in his breast pocket, to protect his heart against bullets. He was 16 or 17. They shipped him to Germany. She must have been distraught. I don't know if the metal would have stopped a bullet, but I know what's written inside the book most certainly helped him come back safely.
At left is my great grandfather's Bible. Known as "Daddy Doak" he was a Methodist minister in the Ozark hills. At right, two beautiful crocodile covered books from the 1800s that belonged to my great uncle Elmer Busch.
A stunning beaded handbag from the 1900s that belonged to my great great grandmother.
A stash of silver dollars and coins, which my mother stored inside an old tea cannister. Each time my sister and I lost a baby tooth, we put it under our pillow. The Tooth Fairy left one of these coins in its place.
My mother kept this gorgeous old wine bottle from the 50s in her bathroom window for as long as I can remember. The color and shape are unusual for a wine bottle, don't you think?
There's a story behind this big purple vase. In the mid 1950s before my sister and I were born, my parents had a big argument. My father came home carrying this vase filled with red roses as an apology. My mother kept it filled with purple irises from her garden, and later painted them, in this wonderful abstract way below:
The painting hung in the den of the house we grew up in, until just recently. I always thought it was a self portrait of my mother. The way she painted the irises reminded me of her flipped up hair-do:
What do you think? She's definitely an iris.
Purple coat and scarf, exiting the metro.
Purple bikini!
More purple people in the metro.
Purple pants in a chic boutique.
Purple handbag, seen on the street.
Another purple thing-y (what is this?) in anothe chic boutique.
This being Paris, even the bag lady is in vogue.
This 100-year-old barrel chair is one of Amber's favorite purchases for the shop, which opened about three weeks ago on Lovers Lane. She's got a great upholsterer who lacquers everything high gloss white and recovers them.
This chair has eight-way hand-tied coils in the seat and the back. The linen and velvet pillow is one of Amber's own designs.
One of Stella Dallas' many parrot lamps.
The chair and table are both reinvented vintage pieces. Amber used grays and beiges as background neutrals for upholstery, furniture and the painted floor. Pops of chartreuse and hot pink liven it all up.
The cube ottoman is new, and matches this new, retro-looking chair below.
The real show stopper is this French armoire from the 1800s, which was plastered in all kinds of groovy 60s era flowers when Amber came across it. She had it lacquered a gorgeous dove gray and high gloss white.
It costs around $4,700. I'm already starting to imagine my apartment done over in this Coco Chanel-esque, gray and white palette.
One of Amber's passions is stationery, such as this beautiful gift box full of letter press stationery and envelopes. She also has a ton of fun and stylish letterpress cards. They start at around $2.
Can you tell that one of Amber's biggest influences is Jonathan Adler? These bright single sheet wrapping papers also have matching cards.
Her other biggest influence is Domino magazine. I can definitely see it.
I love these gorgeous driftwood mirrors.
Half of the store is devoted to cool office supplies, such as these colorful wall calendars.
Amber Davidson at work in her chartreuse office at the back of the shop.
I spent the last two weeks, about five hours a day, cleaning out our childhood home, getting it ready to sell.
My grandmother's hat boxes.
And hats. My brother, a mountain man who loves to kayak and camp and hike, shocked us all by taking a bunch of them back to Minnesota with him. He's going to display them in Plexiglas boxes.
His sentimentality didn't extend to old family photos like this one, which he wanted to toss because there weren't any names on it to identify who the people are. "How do we even know they're our relatives?" he exclaimed. I think it's pretty obvious. These are our hillbilly great, great whatevers from Kentucky.
We also found a few scandalous things. Such as a pair of silk scarves with the Confederate flag on them. These must be from the 50s or 60s. My mother, who was born and raised (like my Dad) in Arkansas, was proud of her Southern heritage. When they first came to Dallas in the 50s, I'm not sure she'd really ever met anyone from New York. It might as well have been a foreign country. She was prejudiced, yes, not against blacks, but against anything Yankee. We were forbidden to put ketchup on hotdogs because "it was Yankee" (I liked ketchup.) And we were admonished if we said "dinner" instead of "supper", because, that, too, was "Yankee". I'm making her sound backwards, and by todays standards it would be. But she was actually a liberal, long before being liberal was popular.
We also found these 38 Specials on the top shelf in her closet. I was shocked. The top one must have been my father's, because it is marked as a service issue. Back in Arkansas, my mother was really good at using a hunting rifle, and I'm sure she felt OK about having these guns in the house. They weigh more than she did, I think, by the time she died.
More unmarked family photos. We found thousands of old photos, many of them stuck between old papers and bills. I'm keeping them all, in hopes of identifying them one day.
A pair of wonderful 1950s era liquor bottles. These were special promotional bottles that liquor stores sold and held bourbon or rum, from what I remember my mother telling me. My mother loved cocktails.
This pocket sized Bible has a strong metal cover. My grandmother Marie gave it to my Dad when he entered the Army, to wear in his breast pocket, to protect his heart against bullets. He was 16 or 17. They shipped him to Germany. She must have been distraught. I don't know if the metal would have stopped a bullet, but I know what's written inside the book most certainly helped him come back safely.
At left is my great grandfather's Bible. Known as "Daddy Doak" he was a Methodist minister in the Ozark hills. At right, two beautiful crocodile covered books from the 1800s that belonged to my great uncle Elmer Busch.
A stunning beaded handbag from the 1900s that belonged to my great great grandmother.
A stash of silver dollars and coins, which my mother stored inside an old tea cannister. Each time my sister and I lost a baby tooth, we put it under our pillow. The Tooth Fairy left one of these coins in its place.
My mother kept this gorgeous old wine bottle from the 50s in her bathroom window for as long as I can remember. The color and shape are unusual for a wine bottle, don't you think?
There's a story behind this big purple vase. In the mid 1950s before my sister and I were born, my parents had a big argument. My father came home carrying this vase filled with red roses as an apology. My mother kept it filled with purple irises from her garden, and later painted them, in this wonderful abstract way below:
The painting hung in the den of the house we grew up in, until just recently. I always thought it was a self portrait of my mother. The way she painted the irises reminded me of her flipped up hair-do:
What do you think? She's definitely an iris.
These are the front doors to Dallas designer Robyn Menter's Highland Park house. Dave Shafer shot them for a story we did for Modern Luxury's Interiors magazine last month. This image never ran, but don't you love it?.
And, don't you love the watery blue glass tiles? I think she said they were from Ann Sacks. They look like Ann Sacks -- beautiful and expensive.
Her throws are a good price at $95 and they look great, but they are made from acrylic and polyester. Too bad.
These papier mache bowls are only $11 each.
I always want to eat cereal out of bowls like these. Ceramic, $38.
Woven in South Africa from grass, $124. A classic.
