Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/439445
DECORATION SOUTHERN GOTHIC WALL M uch-loved artist Hunt Slonem — of the bunny, butterflies and tropical bird paintings — has launched wallpapers, fabrics and carpets through Groundworks at Lee Jofa. Slonem also collects Louisiana plantation houses (he has two, as well as a mansion in Upstate New York), which he decorates in fantastical exotica with eye-popping color, troves of larger-than- life Neo-Gothic antiques, his rich paintings and now, his woven and embroidered fabrics digitally printed on linen, carpets woven in New Zealand wool and wool and silk bamboo combination and wall coverings. Hunt Slonem, to the trade at Lee Jofa showroom. When the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston unveiled 66 years ago in a jaunty little A-frame that prefigured its architecturally unique current building, the museum's first show incorporated modernist design of the era. In the ensuing decades, design was often spoken in terms of exhibition programming, most famously perhaps with the ground-breaking 1987 show for the then- underknown Frank Gehry. Recent CAMH design high points have included the presentation of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Triennial in 2008, followed by a graphic design roundup five years later. For fall 2015, design again returns to the parallelogram on Montrose — this time with a Texas slant, featuring statewide notables in the fields of interiors, product design, fashion and more in "Texas Design Now" opening August 22 (through November 29). Bring out your David Peck. Follow these pages and our new website for updates including the names of the curatorial team and design-wise participants. Catherine D. Anspon A BIRD ON THE CAMH I confess: I have not actually read every word in the 1,000-plus design books that line my office. I do get lost in the photographs and commit these to memory. But one book stands above any design book in recent years. I first heard of this gem before it was published in Spring 2014, through an email from Pam Sommers at Rizzoli: "I am enchanted — totally! — by One Man's Folly: The Exceptional Houses of Furlow Gatewood (Rizzoli). Please have a look at the layouts of this heavenly book," she implores. And I, too, was enchanted. Furlow Gatewood, a dapper nonagenarian designer living in Americus, Georgia, who has, for more than 60 years, re-imagined his family property into an intensely personal world of beauty. Beginning with a carriage house, he then procured and moved other Southern architectural masterpieces and numerous outbuildings and follies as well to his bucolic acreage. You grow to love The Barn, The Peacock House, The Cuthbert House and The Lumpkin House, the peacocks that roam and the charming story recited by author Julia Reed, another Southern seed. The foreword is by Furlow's great friend and fellow decorator Bunny Williams, who is married to antiquary John Rosselli. How these three must have shopped the world's bazaars. Gatewood is a hunter and gatherer, a master assembler of architectural bits and pieces, a colorist of great magic and a believer in mixing the humble with the grand. Gatewood himself and his work are Southern gothic at its best. This book is a triumph and endlessly inspiring. $60, at area booksellers. Holly Moore Hunt Slonem Hutch Gold for Groundworks/Lee Jofa Hunt Slonem Finches Hunt Slonem Bunny Wall Furlow Gatewood DESIGN HEARTS