The Southwest–particularly northern New Mexico–has a special allure for Chicagoan Tina Bramson. Because it`s not possible for her to travel there every weekend, she has used her imagination to do the next best thing.
She has converted one room in her country house in northern Illinois into a fool-the-eye version of a Santa Fe adobe, complete with terra-cotta walls and a beam-and-stripped-sapling roof. In one corner there is a ”break” in the walls that, even on the most wintry Midwestern day, provides a look out onto the blue skies and outbuildings of the artist Georgia O`Keeffe`s Ghost Ranch in Abiqui, N.M.
Antlered skulls, Navaho blankets, pots, baskets and root furniture complete the illusion of desert-style rusticity.
The rest of the house, set deep in a small woods in the midst of farmland, also has Bramson`s stamp on it. Her creativity, collecting skills and love of crafts have turned it into a uniquely alluring and cozy retreat for her and husband David.
The structure is a relatively simple wood cottage, composed of additions to what was a ramshackle farmhouse when they bought it in 1974.
”My husband was buying property, not the house,” Bramson says. So with the help of an architect, the one-story farmhouse was remodeled in the spring of 1982.
Because the architecture was so ordinary in the original house, Bramson wanted something special for the two downstairs bedrooms to bring them into sync with the stunning addition.
After seeing an ad for their work, she asked Rita Miller of the Miller-Wagenaar team of muralists to paint a tin turkey feeder in trompe l`oeil (or
”fool the eye”), so it would blend in with the tree it hung from. (The Bramsons feed the wild turkeys that roam their property, along with the deer, possums, muskrats, mink and red-tailed and grey squirrels.)
Bramson was so pleased with the result, she gave Miller and her husband, William Wagenaar, a folder of clippings she had gathered of rustic looks she liked, turned over the house to them for 10 days and left town.
Working night and day for a week and a half from photographs, the two artists created works of art out of ordinary rooms by the use of trompe l`oeil painting. Through the magic of perspective and not a little skill, they created the illusions of rooms belonging to other times and places.
The results were the Ghost Ranch bedroom and a bedroom painted as it if were the interior of a log cabin, with white plaster chinking between the logs.
Painted on one wall of the log cabin room is a detail of a trompe l`oeil shelf, holding a few objects, and a bonnet hanging from a peg.
While the artists say they had more technical problems doing the logs
–they even interlace in the corners–and that the adobe was easier, the log cabin room turned out to be supremely charming. Bramson furnished it sparsely with American primitive furniture and a red-and-white quilt on the bed, which picks up the red hue in the bark of the ”logs” and brightens their dark look.
The two artists, who do quite a few commercial assignments in Chicago, love doing whole rooms, rather than a mere wall, because the result is
”actually walking into a work of art. For this day and age it is an unusual experience to walk into rooms like these. It is not something Americans are used to,” says Wagenaar, whose training has been in
architectural interiors, as has his wife`s.
The acoustical tile ceiling, said the artists, was their biggest challenge in this assignment, ”because it has a different texture and grid pattern. We created planks to go along with the pattern” in the log cabin room, and in the Ghost Ranch room they re-created the traditional latilla, or stacked stripped sapling roof.
They used washable latex paint in both rooms, with protective coatings, Miller says.
Bramson explains that she and her husband liked the idea of ”a total environment” in each room.
The recent addition to the original house encompasses an environment of a different sort. It includes a friendly great room with fireplace and large plate glass windows that welcome the outdoors.
Bramson explains she is ”a window person. I like a lot of light.” So she asked her architect to design it this way, ”getting the space and the function right. The windows were a big help in bringing the outside in and bringing light in.”
As one enters the great room from the outdoors, through an uncommonly large entry, or mudroom, one is faced with a lovely vignette of furniture and objects that is biographical of Bramson.
It clearly says she is an avid lover and collector of hand-crafted things, loves American painted primitive antiques and has a passion for the Southwest and its art.
An old, battered American primitive table, with some of its faded blue paint still on its sides, holds a collection of changeable favorite things.
On one end might sit an old Mexican wooden saddle tree that Bramson cleverly uses as a bookholder. Next to the saddle tree may be flowers, more books, current magazines, whatever. Beneath this table, one may find deer antlers, laid out like sculptures on the floor.
Back of this table, against the wall, stands a massive Shaker-type cupboard (from Harvey`s Antiques in Evanston) holding wonderful pieces of pottery: some old German spongeware and a number of usable glazed terra-cotta pieces by contemporary artist Luna Garcia.
The refurbishing of her country house provided Bramson with the excuse to buy for it–everything from gnarly root furniture to Adirondack pine cone baskets, Indian pouches and crazy cow tables by Steve Hansen.
She says her favorite things are ”handcrafted and natural,” because it
”is not manufactured. It`s made by somebody personally. It`s got a soul to it.”
Because of the influence of the late Georgia O`Keeffe, Bramson has had an abiding interest in collecting skulls, antlers and turtle shells. Sellers of skulls have even beaten a path to her door, learning of her interest through the collectors` grapevine.
The skulls are throughout her house, but over the great room fireplace she has arranged a visually arresting collection of horned and antlered skulls and Guatemalan dance masks from Doug Dawson`s gallery, Casa del Rio on North Franklin Street. The central one (by a contemporary Tucson artist) in bright blue she spotted on the wall of an Arizona shoe store.
Her living room sofas (by Directional) are appropriately big and comfortably pouffy, covered in a fabric designed by Angelo Donghia, a white canvas spattered with gray and mauve. They are angled around a rustic root coffee table from Design Source on North Wells Street. Bob Turner, the store`s interior designer, gave her help in the layout of this room, selecting colors and suggesting pieces, Bramson says.
The kitchen is part of the great room, an open gallery directly opposite the living room area. ”The kitchen had to be in the living room so if you have company, you don`t miss out on them,” Bramson says.
One interesting feature about it is the rustic but beautifully crafted kitchen cabinets, made by a local carpenter out of weather-beaten wood from a chicken coop. ”I wanted to rough it up and I wanted barn wood, since it is the softest to me and has the most character.”
The paint on the great room walls is sponged on, while the dining room walls are combed, giving unusual visual effects.
There is also a tiled island (the tiles from Hispanic Design on North Cicero Avenue) in the center of the kitchen area. The refrigerator is topped with some of her Adirondack and African baskets and pottery.
The dining room is off the kitchen, a long, spare, O`Keeffe-inspired room with massive table and chairs and a few pieces of choice art on the wall.
Upstairs, above the great room, is an enormous, airy bedroom suite.
”We knew we wanted a big dream bedroom and bathroom,” Bramson says, and that`s what the architect gave her. She is still working on furnishing it, but central in this room is a huge bed with Appalachian twig headboard custom-made for her by local craftsman Bob Brand. Piles of lacy Laura Ashley pillows contrast wonderfully against the rough gray bark of the twisted twigs.
Although it is a long trek from their city home, their country house has become more accessible psychologically to the Bramsons.
”After we bought the house in `74, we mainly used it in the summertime,” she says.
”We weren`t staying out here as long as we are now. And only maybe once a month in the wintertime. Now,” since it has been redone, ”we spend time here year around,” Bramson says. ”We found we loved it so much we wanted to be out here all the time.”
