Coloring Within The Lines
from WNC
On the dreary January day in 2014 when Carole and Cole Hedden first saw what would come to be their new home, it was raining—both outside and inside the house. Visiting Asheville from Alexandria, Virginia, for a jam-packed day of house hunting, the couple had this early twentieth-century brick home overlooking Beaverdam Valley to consider among eight others. The house had been unoccupied for over 20 years, by humans, at least—a family of raccoons was roosting in the attic. Because it was no longer even on the tax roll, the house was considered by most who looked at it as a teardown, desirable solely for the 11 acres situated at the foot of Elk Mountain. Read more here.
A SMOOTH TRANSLATION
FROM CAROLINA HOME AND GARDEN
Starting the visual conversation between a 1920s traditional home and a do-it-yourself cob construction meditation house on the same property in Montford required several skilled translators.
The disparate styles of each structure spoke to the design sense of homeowners Jim Bixby and Paul Thorpe. But they felt that the buildings which shared their property weren’t really conversing with each other. With a porch addition by local architect Diana Bellgowan and a landscape plan designed by Matthew Sprouse of Sitework Studios and contracted by Jonathan Berrier of Berrier Select Landscapes, all the elements now communicate fluently. Read more here.
A Place apart
from WNC
You don’t get to the Southern Highlands Reserve by accident. At the end of a sometimes nearly vertical climb up a twisty-turny Toxaway Mountain road, the land levels off a bit. A set of understated stone pillars indicates something special lies just down the pebble drive. There, you are delivered into a botanical paradise.
The sense of anticipation, the surprise and delight that awaits, also doesn’t happen by accident. Some of the country’s best landscape architects were involved in the design of this native plant arboretum and research center, the Southern Highlands Reserve.
The vision of Atlanta philanthropists Betty and Robert Balentine, this woodland garden was prepared very intentionally, but in a way, it was started through kismet.
After a stay at the Greystone Inn on Lake Toxaway in the late 1990s, the Balentines—dedicated lovers of the outdoors—decided to build a second home in the area, where their children could be in greater contact with nature. When they found their lot—sky-high with breathtaking views over the lake and into South Carolina—they were intrigued by what lay beyond it. There, various tracts of land back up to Panthertown Valley—10,000 acres of richly biodiverse wilderness that’s home to bears, bobcats, timber rattlers, and numerous rare plant species.
Read more here.
RAISE THE ROOF: A NINETEENTH-CENTURY NEW YORK DAIRY BARN BECOMES A CONTEMPORARY HOME IN EAST ASHEVILLE
from WNC
Outside-the-box thinking can lead to the most extraordinary results. That’s the case with a striking but understated home tucked into a cove in East Asheville, designed by Samsel Architects and constructed by Jade Mountain Builders.
It started with an idea: a barn. Not a particular barn, just a barn with a particular footprint—2,800 square feet. The homeowners were retiring and planning to move from their long-time residence in Orlando. There was no lot purchased, indeed not even a zip code in mind. Just the idea of buying an old barn and converting it into a contemporary home where the main living space would be on one floor.
“I am a general contractor and I know how to do this stuff,” says the husband. “We did this pretty backwards.”
The search for a barn led the couple to Heritage Restorations, a company in Waco, Texas, with scouts around the U.S. and in Europe focused on finding and purchasing old barns and other timber-frame buildings. They found the structure they were looking for on the company’s website: a circa-1870 dairy barn still standing and in good condition in Little Falls, New York. Read more here.
RAISING CANE
from Carolina Home and Garden
On the wall of Brandy Clements and Dave Klingler’s Depot Street studio, wooden chairs hang, seatless, waiting to be made useful again. Because their owners loved these seats, they’ve been spared the spot on the sidewalk that often awaits a caned chair with a hole through its center. The couple will weave a new seat through the traditional art of chair caning, saving a family heirloom or favorite antique store find so that it can continue to be loved.
Clements is a fourth-generation chair caner: her great-grandmother Gladys taught her grandmother Ida, who taught her Aunt Lynda, who has been caning in her Norfolk, Virginia workshop for over 30 years. Aunt Lynda passed on the art to Clements through a “chair caning boot camp,” and she started to get jobs through furniture companies while living in Charleston. Her first major job was 30 chairs for the city’s historic Kaspar’s diner, followed by a big contract to fix the chairs at Charleston Place Hotel’s Palmetto Cafe. The job was so big, in fact, that she hired Klingler to help and taught him how to do it, and they’ve been together ever since. Read more here.
Perfectly Clear
from WNC
A fine whiskey ranges in color from tawny to copper, gold to amber, always catching the light invitingly. For connoisseurs, to savor the stuff, glass in hand, is one of life’s great pleasures, and to enjoy it in a vessel with heft and elegance borders on the sublime. “It makes it a little bit more precious—it adds to the experience, without overpowering it,” says Colin O’Reilly of Penland-based Terrane Glass Designs. Terrane’s exquisite whiskey glasses and decanters set a whiskey lover’s heart aflutter, and this up-and-coming glass studio makes all its work—including vases, bowls, and snifters—with equal grace.
With glassblowing, timing is everything, and O’Reilly and studio assistant Joe Nicholson work seamlessly, moving quickly together when seconds count, transforming molten glass into bubbles to be molded, blown, stretched, opened, and annealed. The process is an unforgiving one, in which a slight variation can render a piece unusable. On the other hand, leaving a visible sign of the maker is part of what makes Terrane Glass special, Nicholson says. “The tool marks, the deep indent that forms a handle, the texture where the foot meets the body—those are the kind of details that a lot of people overlook, but that make it more than just a clear cup. Read more here.