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The kitchen's 19th- century Italian cabinet from Round Top, used as a pantry. James Cherry sconce. Opposite page: Antique worktable from Eneby Home in Nashville. Stools by Sawkille Co., Hudson Valley. DeVOL faucet. Marble sink designed by Amanda Medsger. B efore making the leap to interior design, Amanda Medsger of Medsger Studio built a name as a stylist, shaping the look of interiors and tablescapes for Architectural Digest, Elle Decor, Veranda, and Dwell. Her work on cookbooks — most notably Melissa Martin's Mosquito Supper Club: Cajun Recipes from a Disappearing Bayou, which won a James Beard Award — led to restaurant collaborations such as Vestal in Lafayette and Wild Oats in Houston. Now focused on residential work, Medsger brings a quiet elegance to her interiors — stripped down, steeped in nostalgia, and often brushed with a poetic edge. "Residential interiors should have a much deeper feeling, where there's an ineffable mood you can't quite place," she says. "There's so much buzz about doing a restaurant that's fun, but they're a business at the end of the day. Residential is a matter of the heart." The 1950s ranch-style house in Garden Oaks she shares with her husband and five-year- old radiates warmth and soul. Everything, from how objects are arranged on the kitchen shelves to the scale of furniture in the living room, is carefully considered and fine-tuned. "Once the overall project is done, I almost see everything like a detailed photo," she says. "When you start looking closely, you can see how it's all arranged thoughtfully." In our conversa- tion, Medsger opens the doors to her house, sharing the quiet restraint behind each space, her favorite sources for home goods, inspiration, and music that sets the mood while she cooks.. Channeling Donald Judd. I can be pretty rustic and farmhouse-y, but at the same time I'm highly inspired by the minimalism of Donald Judd's art. There's an image I love of his studio kitchen with all this stainless-steel restaurant equipment. So, I decided to do a bare-bones workhorse kitchen with stainless restaurant countertops and drawers. It was to be temporary, but I fell in love with it. I even designed a marble sink with five-inch-thick legs based on a Judd table design. The French worktable. Once I got the antique French worktable from Eneby Home in Round Top for the kitchen, everything just worked. It's all about balance — functional and clean versus beautiful and organic. The table is not sealed, so every week, I scrub it down with Marseille soap to keep the natural wood color. It takes a lot of maintenance, so it's not for everyone. But it's another element of the house that I've come to love because it means that I'm really tied to the objects in this house. It's all about the kitchen. My background is in restaurants; I love being around food, so kitchen design is important because the moment you open the door, you create a mood for your guests. I host a lot, and many of my clients are cooks, and they host a lot. Often when I do a house, the discussion is about how you want guests to feel. I love to talk to clients about how to lay out a kitchen. Because I'm a cook, I know how to move around the kitchen, how to be efficient, and how to make it beautiful and durable. We have an enormous kitchen, which makes the house feel so much bigger because that's where everyone hangs out. We have a pizza oven and have a lot of pizza parties, where everyone brings ingredients and decorates their own pizza. We had one last night — which reminds me, I need to scrub down the French worktable, because it's a mess. 54