Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/112444
Bidding wars: On how you and Robert acquired this pristine Victorian in the West End. Robert had just returned from his first tour of duty in Iraq.��It was December of 2005.��We stepped over the threshold, and it was not a question of if, but of how we would acquire this amazing house.��Although the owners at the time had had it on the market for several months with no action, all of a sudden they were also entertaining a counteroffer from a law firm, which certainly had deeper pockets than us. Luckily the final negotiations were happening between Christmas and New Year���s; we think all of the law partners were in Colorado skiing.�� �� Musing on the past. I am in love with my new gallery at Isabella Court, which opened a year and a half ago. I am in the Evelyn Wilson Interiors space, which I remember from childhood because of its very Dorothy Draper black-and-white-striped awnings. My mother also brought me to Wadler-Kaplan Music when it was in the space at the other end of the building, which is now occupied by Kerry Inman. (I played the piano and still do.��My first recital was in the Brown Auditorium at MFAH.��I played Robert Schumann���s Wilder Reiter, which was perfect except for the last note.) �� On a Yankee/Southern childhood. I was born in the East, but my father���s office was transferred to Houston from Rockefeller Center when Exxon consolidated in the Sunbelt.��We first lived in Champions and later Cypress, where my parents built a Cape Cod saltbox and filled it with American antiques, eccentric for the time and place. Not to be pigeonholed as carpetbaggers, they kept chickens and horses and participated in the Salt Grass trail ride.��At school, apart from reading and math, I learned to love chicken-fried steak, okra and black-eyed peas (not to mention corn dogs and Frito pies). At the same time, a good part of every summer was spent at my grandparents��� house in a little town in the Catskill Mountains. Clearly, it was a conflicted Yankee/Southern childhood. �� First brush with art. My earliest art memories are the sculptures on the Princeton campus and at the MoMA, particularly the work of Gaston LaChaise.��Later, I remember waiting in line with my mother to see the late C��zanne paintings at the MFAH.��And although they are not fine art, per se, the dioramas at the American Museum of Natural History, especially the wolves running in the snow,��completely captivated me. �� On buying and selling. Part of our summer vacations visiting family back East would include buying antiques. We would return to Houston in August with a trailer full of treasures from all over New York and New England.��My parents would resell the ones they didn���t want at antique shows on the weekends back in Texas, where I think I got a knack for buying and selling, as well as developing an eye. Later I became good friends with Susanna Sheffield, who worked for Warren Hadler in Houston and later had her own gallery here.��I had my first painting show at Susanna���s space on Jack Street in 1988. The Vermont corner cabinet in the main room is filled with curiosities and topped with a vintage Dutch bee skep from Installations Antiques in the Heights. Center: Houston-based Geoff Hippenstiel���s oil on canvas Untitled, 2010. Resting on the floor, right: Terrell James��� oil on vellum Field Study, 2005, from Hiram Butler Gallery. Dinner at the de Menils. My first art job, apart from occasional gallery sitting at Sheffield Gallery, was as a gofer for Fred Hughes, Andy Warhol���s business manager for 25 years and a prot��g�� of the de Menils from his time at the University of St. Thomas. Fred was doing reconnaissance in Houston as the newly formed Warhol Foundation was searching for a director.��The greatest thrill of that gig was a small dinner at the Menils��� house with Fred, two of the newly hired Warhol curators (Timothy Hunt and Steven Bluttal) and Walter Hopps.��I had seen La Rime et La Raison in Paris in 1984, and as a young person interested in art this was a dream come true. There was an Yves Klein and an Arcimbaldo in the entry hall.��No one said a word at dinner except Walter and Mrs. de Menil, who beseeched everyone to eat their pineapple.�� True tale from your life as a gallerist. I will never forget staying up all night to finish executing a design of a chair by Robert Wilson that he had drawn the day before one of his shows in Houston.��The day before. It was a pleasure, but I remember feeling woozy at the opening. OPPOSITE PAGE: Top: Borden and Briscoe are the third owners of the 1895 manse built for Conrad Schwarz, a pioneering vehicle manufacturer who made his fortune selling carriages and early automobiles on Preston Street in downtown Houston. The spacious main room of the house has hosted countless parties, weddings and even the funeral of Schwarz himself in 1919. In the window box, a 1967 Willem de Blaise double-manual harpsichord is flanked by Laura Lark���s Cheveux d���Ange ink on Tyvek drawing (left). Ted Kincaid���s Lunar photograph (right) hangs above a 1920s Santa Fe mission table from Installations Antiques in the Heights. The 1910 slag glass lamp is from Antique and Design Guy on lower Westheimer. Both Lark and Kincaid are headliners in Borden���s stellar stable.l Below: Unexpected treasures fill a Vermont corner cupboard in the main room of the house. THIS PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM MIDDLE RIGHT: Painter Geoff Hippenstiel and sculptor Sharon Engelstein gather in the entry of Borden and Briscoe���s home for a casual lunch with friends on a recent afternoon. The rare and distinctive woodwork throughout the house is heart of pine, still pristine 118 years after it was built. The handsomely carved paneling is a striking feature of the entire house. The motif of the turned finial on the newel post at the bottom of the staircase is repeated inside and outside the extraordinarily intact Victorian. Borden and Briscoe���s casual but elegant lunch fare is served from a wheeled Shaker laundry table, which also functions as a dining-room table, from shakerworkshops.com. Kate Shepherd���s handmade paper work from 2006 hangs in the spacious main room. Eileen Gray designed this adjustable glass and chrome side table in 1929 for her sister who loved to eat in bed; at Design Within Reach. Here it���s paired with a vintage George Nelson swag chair Borden found at a Montrose junk dealer in the mid-1980s. The music room (background) overlooks the rear garden of the house and features a Steinway grand piano made the same year that the house was built: 1895. MARCH | PAGE 39 | 2013 On your very first art acquisition ��� a Mark Flood canvas. This was in the late 1980s at Commerce Street studios where Mark, then John Peters, had a studio.��I was a student, and I didn���t have much money.��Mark was beyond cool to make an offer that if I brought him two stretched canvases, he would paint them both and give me one.��I was back the next day with two stretched canvases.��He said that although he had made that offer before, no one had ever taken him up on it.��And he would be damned if he ever did that again.��The other painting is in Bill Lassiter���s collection. House music: Bach lives on. I have many favorites, and it seems like a shame to mention only one. The names are not unusual: Schubert, Schumann, Bach. I will say that if I could bring only one manuscript to a desert island, with a piano of course, it would be Bach���s Well Tempered Clavier Book II.��The good news is that if my harpsichord happened to wash on