Knoll Saarinen 47 inch table, $875, regularly $1,766
Brock Butler is offering my blog readers half off his cache of fine Design Within Reach of furniture, all only a few years old and in pristine condition. I've shown you some of Brock's favorite pieces. I bought a table from him, and he's a terrific, honest guy to do business with. Plus, he may just let you borrow his pickup truck to haul it home.
Ph: 972.596.5305
Cell: 214.392.4672
Paul Garzotto, described once by the New York Times as a society decorator who almost never takes on new clients, was the other half of the celebrated design firm Green-Garzotto until Marguerite Green died many years ago. Maggie, as Paul and her friends called her, left a legacy of design in Dallas that continues to influence interior designers with its brilliant use of color, among other aspects. 
These are some of the amazing plates that were in Maggie's collection. Raspberries and pinks and greens and golds. So wonderful. And, they're all for sale.
These wonderful subdued celadon vases were in Paul's store, Paul Garzotto At Home, which closed several years ago. Many of the things from his store will be on sale, also.
More of Maggie's china. There are full sets of china as well as bits and pieces. 
There's a full set of these amazing hot pink plates, bowls and cups and saucers. Pay no attention to the blue masking tape -- everything was being unpacked and I just took impromptu photos.
In addition to hundreds of pieces of tabletop items, the sale includes furniture and fabrics (ask to see the incredible tapestry fragments by William Morris that belonged to Maggie, not shown).
Maggie had a huge collection of lusterware figurines, and all will be for sale.
There's a full set of these 19th century Japanese plates that belong to Paul. I've never seen anything like them. 
The inspiration was a cottage in the Cotswolds. This beautiful house has a real slate roof and uses native Texas stone. It's for sale, if you're interested.
That's a great name for a seasonal company that decorates homes for the holidays, don't you think? Chateau Mistletoe has just been launched by young Dallas designers Gretchen Leigh Clark and Hilary Campbell, in an effort "to prevent innocent home owners from committing holiday decor faux pas." I like that. There's so many of us out there that think Christmas decorating is only about the garish clash of green and red, and flying reindeers and a cloying Santa Claus. I'm not saying get rid of Santa or Rudolph or green trees or red lights, just that the whole thing needs to look a lot better than it has. The mainstream catalogue companies have gotten into the stylish Christmas act with some pretty sleek, simple, monochromatic Christmas designs. But there are so many people in Dallas, still with tons of money, who don't decorate well during the holidays. You know who you are, and we do, too. We have to make our way down Armstrong Avenue each X-mas to get to our mid-century modern high rise apartment building on Turtle Creek, fighting the onlookers and the gigantic mechanical snowmen and blinking red-nosed reindeer all the way home. A simple green wreath punctuated by vibrant reindeer moss may not attract a gaggle of gawkers, but it would win big points in our stylish home design notebook, if we had one. Gretchen and Hilary describe the look of their new holiday design company as "French deco meets American eclectic." Gretchen, who now works part-time for Jan Showers after having a baby, has the French glamour thing down pretty well. I don't know much about Hilary yet, whose website is still a work in progress, but if the two are teamed up, there's much promise.
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Last Saturday night I went to see Otello at Dallas' fabulous new Winspear. Our $35 seats on the 6th tier were the cheapest available, but look at the view of the stage and the orchestra pit! The acoustics were almost perfect and we could see everything clearly on stage. You would not have even needed opera glasses the view was that good. (My friend John Branch, who was visiting from New York, took this photo for me from a camera the size of a cigarette lighter that he had secreted in his pocket.)_1.jpg)
The spectacular chandelier is made from fiber optics and retracts into the ceiling. I love chandeliers in opera halls, don't you? The curtain was made by hand by an artist in Argentina. Read all about it in the New York Times.
Dallas lighting designer Craig Roberts' wonderful Vermont cottage is in the current issue of Design New England, an award-winning magazine published by the Boston Globe.
