Evergreen and Ever-Evolving

EVERGREEN AND EVER-EVOLVING

Evergreen and Ever-Evolving

Toms Creek Nursery in Denton celebrates 20 years of wreath workshops

By Cassie Bustamante     Photographs by John Gessner

Down a winding gravel drive, just past the ducks and several greenhouses on the 400-acre Toms Creek Nursery property, a large, heated greenhouse awaits. Inside, straw wreath forms wrapped in dark green plastic sit two at a table with small tins of greening pins plus pairs of clippers. A few stations throughout the building are loaded with overflowing buckets of greenery and berries in scarlet and plum. And, of course, there’s hot cocoa, coffee and cookies. The only thing you need to bring to this hidden Denton treasure? Yourself and a little spark of holiday spirit.

“The first year, there were probably 10 people,” says horticulturist Jim Carraher, whose idea it was to start these wreath-making workshops, which began 20 years ago in unheated smaller greenhouses. “I’d been to a garden center that was up in Greensboro and they were selling greenery that you could take home and make into wreaths and, I thought, we’ve got hundreds of acres of plant material here.”

Now, in the greenhouse, over 40 people mill about planning their designs for their own wreaths. And that’s just one of many sessions available over a two-and-a-half-week period that begins the day after Thanksgiving. In 2023, the workshop broke 1,000 total attendees. Former nursery manager Brittany Andersen said at the time that their max capacity in a season is around 2,000, a number that depends not only on space but greenery available. The farm has trees that are specifically grown for this workshop. “But,” Andersen, had noted, “we need more trees to have enough greenery.”

This nearly century-old farm did not begin its life as a lush and idyllic setting that would draw mostly well-heeled urbanites for continuing education. But this nursery’s line of owners knows something about growth opportunities.

In 1934, single mother Ovie Henson purchased the property with her own money. Her husband, who’d been older than her and already passed his wealth on to his older children from previous marriages, died early in their marriage, leaving her with a son and not much else.

But Ovie was “tough people,” according to granddaughter Melinda Vaughan, the 70-year-old third-generation proprietress of Toms Creek Nursery. How did Ovie, a single woman with a baby during The Great Depression, manage to purchase the farm she named after its creek? With money she earned from her job as a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse that she’d wisely invested in a little mill close to what would eventually become the N.C. Zoo. She traded off her stake in the mill for the first 200 acres.

“One of the old neighbors was a big farmer,” says Vaughan, “saying, ‘I am going to get that land for nothing because that little lady — she is going to go under.’”

Vaughan, whose blue eyes sparkle as she speaks of her Granny, holds herself proudly, her shining silver hair grazing her shoulders. “She proved him wrong though.” With sheep and chickens, Toms Creek got its start, eventually adding cows. But it soon evolved when Ovie discovered she had a green thumb. Money that was earned from the plant portion of her business was fed right back into the community and given to the Quaker church she belonged to. While the dairy no longer runs, Vaughan recalls getting the cows in their loft before catching the bus for school as a youngster and remembers Granny milking them well into her 60s.

Today, Toms Creek Nursery is home to not only acres and acres of plants, but also its own landscaping and design company, run by Brandon Vaughan, one of Melinda’s sons. In addition to being owner, Vaughan is also the designer. In fact, Carraher, wreath workshop innovator, began on the landscaping crew. He met and married a woman from Denton and moved there with her after earning his B.S. in ornamental horticulture from N.C. State. And, as Vaughan plainly states about the Denton area, “There’s only one nursery big enough to hire a person.” So Carraher put down roots at Toms Creek. That was some 30 years ago.

These days, 67-year-old Carraher’s sole focus is the wreath workshop. In 2021, in fact, the farm purchased a special T-shirt for his role. Pictured on the back of it? Why, a wreath, of course, the words “The Wreath Man” surround it.

Each workshop session runs two hours and change, during which time Carraher roams the greenhouse, answering questions and offering guidance as needed. Otherwise, it’s a free-for-all when it comes to the creation and design. The tools and materials are all provided. There’s an inspiration binder filled with images of wreaths Carraher and customers have created over the last 20 years. And sprinkled throughout the greenhouse, doors of all colors hold wreath hangers, welcoming customers to test their creations.

“Basically there’s no wrong or right way to do it,” says Carraher. “That’s the beauty of it all.” With several types of greenery and berries — Leyland cypress, American boxwood, D.D. Blanchard magnolia, blue Pfitzer juniper, American beautyberry, Norway spruce, Sunkist arborvitae, heavenly bamboo nandina berries, white pine, multiple yews and multiple holly berries — customers can create their own mix. And over two decades of workshops, Carraher has yet to see it all.

“When you mix up all these textures, even after all these years of doing it . . . some of them are just breathtaking,” he says.

For many, the Toms Creek Nursery wreath workshop has become a holiday tradition. Carraher recalls a group of young moms who hit the workshop as a break from their children. Two of those moms still carve out the time for it each year. “One of the two, she was pregnant the first time she came,” he recalls. “And now her son is 16 years old.”

Sue Shumaker has been coming with her friend, Susan Short, and a varying group of women for about a decade. This time, she showed up with a dozen wreath-makers.

“I first came with Little Gate Garden Club in Asheboro and loved it so much, I invited Sue,” says Short. Since those first years at the workshop together, Short has moved to the Charlotte area. “I spent the night in a hotel last night so I could be here first thing this morning. That’s how much I love it!”

With so much experience under their belts, have their wreath-making skills improved over the years? Absolutely. But, according to Shumaker, there’s never been an ugly wreath that came out of this workshop. “Some are Southern Living-beautiful, but they’re all pretty. Every wreath that walks out the door is beautiful.”

The two friends recall a bittersweet memory during the COVID pandemic when a friend was ill and couldn’t attend. “Jim filled up a bag of goodies for me and I drove it to her house and put it on her porch,” says Shumaker. “That’s just like Sue,” adds Short, gazing at her friend.

Carraher also remembers the pandemic-influenced pivots: Tables were spaced out as they are now, but only one person to a table. During that time, he also offered pick-up of all the wreath-making essentials so customers could recreate the experience safely at home.

But today the workshop bustles with activity, the smell of Christmas pine wafting through the air.

“There is just something about a fresh wreath on the door,” says Vickie Whitaker, who’s attending for the second time. “It really makes you think about Christmas when you were young. Years ago, we didn’t go out and buy wreaths or buy decorations. We made them! I think that is part of it. Don’t you?”

“You’re still young!” her friend, first-timer Linda Powell, responds with a laugh. Powell entered the workshop doubting her creative skills. As the workshop progresses and her lush wreath nears completion, you’d never guess it was her first time.

And therein lies the magic. “It’s always that smile on that person’s face who was convinced they couldn’t do it — and they did,” says Carraher. “That’s what really sticks out the most.”

Time Waits for No One but Pauses for You

TIME WAITS FOR NO ONE BUT PAUSES FOR YOU

The stories within Greensboro History Museum’s stories are seen through an ever-evolving lens

By Billy Ingram     Photographs by Bert VanderVeen

One hundred years ago this month, history buff Mrs. Alice Bell founded the Greensboro Historical Museum, at first a purely aspirational effort seeking to canonize treasures of living memory related to the establishment and rapid growth of this then unassuming small town. That objective surely proved challenging for those who followed in Bell’s footsteps, when the 20th century unfolded and Greensboro became synonymous in the minds of too many Americans as being, all too often, most decidedly, on the wrong side of history.

Coinciding with the seventh anniversary of Armistice Day, the Greensboro Historical Museum’s first public showing in 1925 consisted primarily of war era relics (Revolutionary, Spanish-American, Confederate and WWI), along with examples of evolving women’s fashions. Located in the downtown library’s basement, hundreds of historically significant curios salvaged from attics and closets around town neatly presented in five display cases “all that the museum association had funds for.” Admission for the couple of hundred people in attendance then, as it is now, was free.

In 1930, the museum, an all-volunteer, mostly female effort, took up residence in a former schoolhouse on Cypress Street until 1939, when the public library, with the museum and other civic organizations in tow, was installed in the original First Presbyterian Church building facing Summit Avenue. In 1964, the Greensboro Public Library relocated to North Greene Street, where Elon University School of Law is today, allowing the museum to expand into the entire 17,000-square-foot space, since expanded, it still occupies today.

Carol Ghiorsi Hart, director of the Greensboro History Museum for the last 12 years, and Curator of Community History Glenn Perkins walked me through the challenging yet inspiring task involved in weaving relevant and engrossing narratives around our city for limited-run events while simultaneously nurturing and preserving a sanctuary devoted to Greensboro’s pivotal role in major historical events — the fight for our nation’s independence; the ending of the Civil War, sparking an Industrial Revolution in the South; sitting at the forefront of women’s suffrage; being a major military presence during World War II; and, its decades spent suspended on a razor’s edge during the struggle for civil rights and equality.

The staff must be in harmony with whomever it was that said “history gives answers only to those who know how to ask questions.” A fairly recent acquisition, but one of the oldest American artifacts the museum owns, is a knitted cap from the Revolutionary War. “We’ve done some DNA analysis on what may be a blood stain from that cap.” Awaiting the results, Perkins contends that just possessing a historical item is only the beginning of a journey of discovery, but “If you take good care of these things, they’ll continue to tell stories.”

Because of its affiliation with the Smithsonian Institute, not long ago, an original copy of the Emancipation Proclamation signed by Abraham Lincoln was on loan to our museum. Of course, anyone could find a scan of the document online or purchase a reproduction. “But,” Director Hart says, “the number of people who came to be in the presence of something Lincoln signed, who literally wept seeing it, was such a powerful moment.”

Museums in general are struggling, but the key to survival lies in adapting to an ever-shifting culture, with the focus no longer pointing inward. “Although we do have incredibly talented people, very knowledgeable,” Hart emphasizes, “there’s a recognition that, especially for a history museum, members of our community are authorities as well as we are — that we are all working together not only to document history, but to help shape what history looks like.”

That means taking what some might consider to be small family stories and placing them on equal footing with more well-known names around town. “Greensboro’s history is one of arrival,” Hart says. “There’s a reason we’re called The Gate City and why, when people are drawn here for whatever reason, they bring change and vitality to the city.”

Inside the “This Just In” case greeting visitors on the second floor there’s a collection of hair crimpers, turners and curlers used by entrepreneur Pauline Farrar McCain, who attended Maco Beauty College in the late-1940s. “Maco was a Black-owned hair business,” an institution that trained over 1,000 beauticians between 1935 and 1969, Perkins explains, “established by folks who came to this city, the Londons, to make their own fortune.” After graduating, McCain went to work for Foust Beauty Shoppe (“Where There’s Hair There’s Hope”) on East Market, subsequently purchasing it in 1960.

While hairstyles were being set back at her shop in the ’60s, McCain could often be found just blocks away participating in Civil Rights marches. For the last five decades, Foust Beauty Shoppe was located at 414 E. Market, where Mrs. McCain continued to oversee operations until her passing in 2020. “She was a community hub,” says Director Hart. “Often it’s not just about what we have on display, but how we can build on some of these stories and fill in some gaps.”

There was an exhibit 10 years ago on the Warnersville community that not only brought forth “a lot of oral histories, but also photographs and other things we hadn’t collected previously,” Perkins says. “We had another focusing on second generation Asian Americans, another story that goes way back to the turn of last century, and the different businesses that were owned by Chinese immigrants.”

“Voices of a City” is the main attraction on the second floor, an Aladdin’s cave of life-sized, interactive dioramas arranged in a panoramic maze, each corner and corridor along this veritable time tunnel a snapshot of life from pioneer days forward. At the push of a button, excerpts from oral histories and historical testimonies augment the visuals, which are both exhaustive and stunning in their presentation.

For instance, one exhibit in this hall might seem incongruous, but is actually a clever juxtaposition. A familiar metal-and-neon sign that hung for decades in Blumenthal’s clothing store, enticing customers with a free pack of cigarettes if their receipt matched the numbers listed on the sign, that now hangs above an assortment of early contraptions used in denim manufacturing. Near the railroad tracks on South Elm, Blumenthal’s, from 1926 until 2005, was the young folks’ go-to retailer for Levis and Wranglers, while selling cigarettes manufactured locally at cost, even giving smokes away, to boost denim jeans sales.

There’s an alcove devoted to Army Air Force’s (AAF) Basic Training Center No. 10, later designated ORD (Overseas Replacement Depot). Surrounded by colorful propaganda posters enticing folks to “Buy Bonds” is one of the bunk beds tens of thousands of inductees slept in while being trained in ground and air combat for some of the most decisive battles of World War II. The largest U.S. military base located inside the limits of a city was situated down and around East Bessemer Avenue from 1943 until 1946.

“Most people think a history museum is going to be filled with a lot of dusty old stuff and be sort of boring and be all about dates and places,” Hart points out. “So one of the things we’re trying to do is to shift that perception a little bit.”

Where else could one experience the momentary joy of reconnecting with ripples from a past thought to be lost forever? For me, it was seeing once again the Art Deco neon WBIG Radio sign that hung in its studio, beginning in the 1930s, recently restored at great effort — then, hearing the voice of WBIG’s legendary morning show DJ and family friend Bob Poole. A nod to our city’s rich broadcasting legacy, with tributes to George Perry and Sandra Hughes of WFMY-TV, WGHP sportscaster Charlie Harville, and WEAL’s Alfred G. Richard.

A bone of contention for museums lately has been an inadvertent stockpiling of culturally significant items appropriated by amateur archeologists or gathered up unthinkingly on foreign shores as souvenirs. “We sent back a number of things that were treasures of war during World War II that came into the museum.” Consisting of Japanese dog tags, good luck flags and other ephemera that American soldiers brought home with them, Perkins says they realized, “Those don’t belong here. Part of our work is returning things to appropriate places, and that can be part of the inhale-exhale of a museum.”

Making collections more readily accessible to the public is a primary goal moving forward, with transcripts of oral histories and some 15,000 photographs already easily searchable online through UNCG’s Gateway project (gateway.uncg.edu/greensboromuseum).

Bernard Cone’s photo albums from 1900 through the 1910s; The Art Shop owner Charles Farrell’s photographs highlighting the city’s growth from the 1920s into the 1940s; Greensboro Fire Department scrapbooks; maps of Greensboro and Guilford County dating back to the 1870s; documents pertaining to local union organizing; the Abraham H. Peeler Papers, chronicling the evolution of African American education locally; letters, memorabilia and documents belonging to writer William Sydney Porter (O. Henry); these are just an inkling of the museum’s digital footprint.

Greensboro History Museum members receive a twice-a-month digital newsletter, a printed ROAR newsletter, early notice on happenings, plus invitations to members-only gatherings. There are also behind the scenes tours for contributors. “People love to go behind locked doors,” Director Hart says. “We have on the order of 30,000 objects, most are in storage but not in dusty boxes in the basement, they’re well cared for and numbered.”

During one of those “backstage” tours you can view rarities not currently on display or possibly never before seen by the public. Take, for instance, a pristine velvet, silk-lined cloak, embroidered with Indian or Iranian gold stitching from 1805 and gifted to future First Lady Dolley Madison by the first Muslim diplomatic ambassador to visit the United States. This item of clothing is significant for a number of reasons, not the least being that, back in 1789, Morocco was the very first country to recognize the United States as an independent nation, before the Revolutionary War had been won.

Because I have great admiration for our world class GFD, a wooden bucket with a leather strap dated 1828 was brought down from storage for us to photograph, typical of those used by fire brigades long before Greensboro had any form of an organized fire department. Two hundred years ago, first responders (neighbors) would pass one bucketful of water at a time down a line of volunteers, from the well to the flames and back again to refill. Taking great pride in their efforts, those sturdy pails were decorated with the brigade’s logo and other flame-related flourishes.

It’s true, we will never again walk casually through the unencumbered doorways of youth, bathed in the warmth of worlds that long ago ceased revolving. Tipping back into the deepest recesses of memory, connecting even momentarily to people and places associated with what the march of time has mercilessly (or mercifully) bulldozed in its path, is the continuing contribution our Greensboro History Museum offers all of our lives, year in and year out, hopefully for the next 200 years.

A Day at the Museum

A DAY AT THE MUSEUM

A Day at the Museum

Young minds bring exhibits to life

By Billy Ingram     Photographs by Bert VanderVeen

On one otherwise uneventful afternoon, two working moms unleash unleash their three adorable offspring — Owen (6) and Ellie Thompson (3), along with Wilder Bustamante (6) — on the Greensboro History Museum.

We tend to think of museums as being focused on adult interests, so these mothers must wonder if anything they encounter will fully engage with a modern child’s iPad-oriented attention span.

In a stuffy old museum?!?

Wilder and Owen are excited about what discoveries await them. “Some museums have dinosaur bones,” Wilder exclaims. Do the boys secretly hope that, somewhere up ahead, dinosaur skeletons will spring to life at any moment?

By design perhaps, a young mind will instantly recognize museums as safe spaces where imagination flourishes, fueled by their innate curiosity and sense of wonder. Plus, this place has multiple stages for play acting.

“I’ll get it!!!” little miss Ellie shouts as the family telephone rings. It’s Ellie’s new beau calling, asking her out to the Carolina Theatre to see Clara Bow’s latest moving picture. Ellie exclaims, “That’s the cat’s meow!”

Following the picture show, they’ll stroll a few blocks to lean dreamingly over the soda fountain at Fordham’s Drug Store downtown, sharing a lavender malted milkshake — two straws, of course.

They grow up so quickly, don’t they?

Tumbling into another room, our three adventurers happen upon an early mobile fire-fighting vehicle used by our own fire department. Owen informs everyone, “Those fire engines are so old, they must be from the 1980s.” Owen’s mom is actually from the 1980s and lets out a laugh!

At the dawning of the 20th century, this Greensboro fire truck, the General Greene, was yanked into action by a horse named Prince, the most photographed and talked about equine of that time.

Why was that? Because, after dousing the flames, firefighters would get the horse drunk on the most expensive whiskey available. But there’s no reason for these young’uns to know anything about that!

Wilder may be pointing out the many ways these kids are lucky to be living in modern times and not in the days before any form of entertainment they are familiar with was ever even imagined in the wildest science fiction stories.

For a passing moment, a mid-century living room captures their attention, back when the TV set was furniture you couldn’t sit too close to. Why did everything from lounge chairs to refrigerators come in shades of lime green? To this day, no one knows.

Like squaresville, man.

A lone child standing alongside an actual covered wagon from the 1750s accentuates the enormous undertaking pioneer families were faced with, all of their belongings bundled inside, making their way South down the Great Wagon Road in search of a better life.

This road wagon was first class travel for those traversing an untamed wilderness before the advent of railroads.

Li’l sluggers Owen and Wilder enjoy attending games at the nearby baseball stadium, so they’re staring in awe at uniforms and equipment used by both the Greensboro Bats and Grasshoppers. “It looks like toys,” Wilder says about the display they both agree is their favorite in all of the museum.

A simple encapsulation, yet they returned repeatedly because it’s history that relates to their life experience.

Owen positions himself in front of a keyboard, ready to type out tall tales of knights in shining armor slaying fire-breathing dragons, damsels in distress being rescued from watery ponds, or, perhaps, the thrill of hitting a World Series-winning home run?

The possibilities are endless, but, while the letters and numbers on the keys all look familiar, the battery appears to be dead . . . and where did they hide the “send” button?

Kiddos are naturally inquisitive and curious. These boys are just now learning to read, but that’s no hurdle with information at their fingertips. But how would modern kids know which end of the receiver to put to their ears? It’s evolutionary, my dear Watson!

Not all superheroes wear capes. Back in 1957, Josephine Boyd was hassled and bullied constantly in high school, but served as an inspiration to millions of young people by bravely being the first to attend a school where she was unwelcome simply because she was Black. She graduated with honors.

Today, the road in front of that high school is named Josephine Boyd Street.

Wilder instinctively runs toward the Woolworth’s sit-in exhibit. Is it a fascination with the shiny chromed seats and lunch counter accents or the voices of societal change he’s tuned into?

Wilder and Owen went running back into the Voices of a City exhibit to experience what went unnoticed the first time through. They are found, fascinated by broadcast technology from more than 50 years ago, watching George (Old Rebel) Perry, who entertained local kiddies for 25 years on WFMY.

In the ‘60s and ’70s, George Perry would carpool kids from the Hayes-Taylor YMCA to appear in the audience so that viewers at home would see how diverse our community was . . . and still is.

“Time to go!”

Mrs. Thompson calls out. But where are those boys?

All good things must end but these indefatigable imps demand a return visit, despite encountering exactly zero dinosaurs stomping around the grounds.

On the way out, our two moms drop a few dollars into the donation box. “Anything keeping our Energizer bunnies entertained for an hour or two gets a big tip from us!”

The Family Meal

THE FAMILY MEAL

The Family Meal

Gather ’round the table and serve up one of Greensboro’s global chefs’ favorite dishes

By Cassie Bustamante     Photographs by Amy Freeman

In the spirit of celebratory feasts, we asked four local chefs — whose roots lie elsewhere around the world — to share a dish that’s a favorite around their own family tables. With so much to be grateful for in the Gate City, our bellies are especially thankful for the rich diversity of world-class hospitality and global fare available without having to travel far.

Jorge Castillo and daughter Jennifer, Embur Fire Fusion

“Food is a symphony,” says Embur chef-owner Jorge Castillo. “Everything that is in the dish, you have to put together in order to feel that.” Castillo, who trained at the Culinary Institute of America’s New York campus, originally hails from the Peruvian coast, where fresh seafood is abundant. “You ever sit with Peruvian people?” he asks. “They eat!” And much of what they eat is a Japanese-Peruvian fusion cuisine known as Nikkei. His youngest daughter, Jennifer, who is working with her father until she attends law school next year, notes that Peru is home to a large number of Japanese immigrants who have influenced the culture. This dish, homemade Peruvian Nikkei-style fish, is a blend of veggies — snow peas, zucchini, peppers, Napa cabbage and bean sprouts — paired with fish and rice. When the smell of Castillo’s homemade sweet-and-sour sauce bristling with fresh spices tickles her nose, Jennifer says, “Oh, there’s about to be a big ol’ feast here!”

Homemade Peruvian
Nikkei-Style Fish for Two

12-ounces white fish fillet
(Chef Jorge recommends grouper) 

3/4–1 cup broccoli, chopped

1/2 cup cauliflower, chopped

1/2 cup green beans (cut into thirds) 

1/2 cup snow peas

1 green bell pepper, chopped

1 red bell pepper, chopped

2 cups Napa cabbage, chopped into small pieces

1 handful of bean sprouts

1 teaspoon fresh minced ginger, divided

1 teaspoon minced garlic, divided 

1 tablespoon oyster sauce, plus more for drizzling

1/2 tablespoon soy sauce, plus more for drizzling

1–1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil, plus more for drizzling

1 teaspoon sweet and sour sauce 

1 teaspoon sesame oil 

Salt and pepper, to taste 

Red chili flakes, to taste

1 cup any choice of cooked rice (white rice preferably), divided into two servings

Directions: 

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. 

Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Once the water has started boiling, add the broccoli and cauliflower and cook for about two minutes. (If using green beans instead of snow peas, boil them now as well). Then remove the broccoli and cauliflower, place into an ice water bath and set aside. After a few minutes, drain the water. Cut the 12-ounce fish fillet into two pieces. Place in a bowl and add salt, pepper, 1/2 teaspoon of minced ginger and 1/2 teaspoon of garlic. Drizzle equal parts of soy sauce and oyster sauce, and then add olive oil. 

Heat a large nonstick pan over medium heat. Place the seasoned fish on the pan. Cook until lightly golden-brown on one side, about two minutes. Turn the fish over and repeat to the other side. Place the fish in a baking dish or keep in oven-safe pan.

In the preheated oven, bake the fish in the oven for about five minutes. (Time can vary depending on fish used, but the internal temperature should be 135 degrees Fahrenheit). 

Meanwhile, in a separate pan, heat about 1–1 1/2 tablespoons of olive oil in a large pan over high heat. Add the bell peppers and snow peas (or prepared green beans if used). Sauté for 30–45 seconds and then add 1/2 teaspoon of minced garlic. 

Once the garlic is lightly golden, add the cauliflower, broccoli, Napa cabbage and bean sprouts to the pan with the bell peppers and snow peas/greens beans. Sauté for another minute.

Add 1 tablespoon oyster sauce and 1/2 tablespoon soy sauce to the vegetables and toss together. 

Remove the pan from heat. Add sweet and sour sauce, sesame oil and red chili flakes. Toss and set aside. 

Divide fish among two plates, top it with the vegetables and serve with choice of rice.

Ginah & Mike Soufia, Wallstreet Deli & Catering

“My sister-in-law, who is American, calls this purple chicken,” says Ginah Soufia. A first-generation Palestinian American, Gina has owned Wallstreet Deli & Catering for 26 years with her Palestinian-born husband, Mike. “The aroma . . .  it takes me back to my childhood,” she says, recalling the scent of sizzling, sumac-infused onions and golden-toasted pine nuts that drifted through the modest three-bedroom home. The table was always loaded with food and family — three generations living under one roof. To this day, she believes in setting a longer table to make room for others. “The great thing about the Palestinian culture is our hospitality — it is unmatched.” Musakhan, the national dish of Palestine, is often prepared at home by Ginah, with Mike — “the baker” — making the flatbread, Taboon, which sops up the flavor. What tradition does she hope to pass on to her own three grown children? “I want my kids to know that no matter what, your family will be there for you,” she says. “No matter what, your family is your family.”

Musakhan

Without chicken:

8 large red onions, medium-chopped

2 cups extra virgin olive oil

Chicken bouillon powder, to taste

1/3 cup good-quality sumac (a bright-red spice made from ground dried sumac berries), plus more for sprinkling

6 Taboon or plain naan bread pieces

Pine nuts, fried or roasted

With chicken (same as above, plus):

3 small chickens

1/4 cup olive oil

1 tablespoon sumac

1 tablespoon seven spices

1 tablespoon ground coriander

1 tablespoon garlic powder

2 tablespoons salt

Without chicken:

Heat olive oil over low heat. Add onions to pan and sauté. Keep mixing until the onions become soft, have a bright pink color to them and have released all their water.

Continue to mix and add bouillon powder and sumac.

Spread onion mixture on each piece of bread and sprinkle with pine nuts and a little more sumac. Repeat and layer as you go, creating a stack.

With chicken:

Preheat oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit.

Cut each chicken into either two halves or four pieces. Pat dry with paper towel.

Mix the olive oil and spices in a small bowl then brush on chicken from all sides. Place on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, allowing room between each piece of chicken.

Cover with aluminum foil and bake for about one hour, then uncover and bake an additional 5–10 minutes until the skin is crispy and golden-brown.

Follow steps 1–3 from the vegetarian version above. Layer as many pieces of bread and onion mixture as you’d like, followed by a piece of chicken on top. For a single serving, one piece of bread topped with onions and one piece of chicken is recommended.

Joseph Ozbey, Cugino Forno

Born and raised in Turkey, Cugino Forno Pizzeria co-owner Joseph Ozbey has fond recollections of family meals centered around Lahmacun, aka Turkish pizza. “Every time I have this dish, it reminds me of our Sundays when I was a little kid.” Armed with the toppings his mother had prepared and some pocket change, Ozbey would go to the local baker, who would put the topping on crusts and bake. When Ozbey returned home with the fragrant, steaming Lahmacun, the table would be prepared — with salads, herbs, tomatoes, yogurt drinks — and the family would eat together. Soon, God willing, he will have a few of his own little ones sitting around the family table and he can share the rich history of his Turkish heritage. “Even a simple dish,” he says, “reminds you of your culture, reminds you of your roots.”

Lahmacun (Turkish Pizza)

Makes six 10-inch pizzas

For the crust:

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons kosher salt

1 1/2 teaspoons cane sugar

2 teaspoons dried instant yeast

1 2/3 cups water

For the topping:

1/3 cup small red bell pepper

1/2 cup onion

1/3 cup parsley

2 cloves garlic

1 teaspoon dried oregano

1/2 teaspoon dried mint

1 teaspoon cumin

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

2 tablespoons Turkish red pepper paste (can substitute tomato paste with a dash of hot sauce)

1/2 pound ground beef

For the crust:

Combine all of the dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Whisk together.

Add the water and fold and mix until a ball of dough forms. Allow to rise for about one hour.

Transfer the dough to a floured surface. Cut the dough into six even pieces. Shape each piece by hand and then use a rolling pin to create a thin circular shape. (Add additional flour to the surface, to your hands and to the rolling pin when necessary.)

For the topping:

Fine-dice the red peppers and onion, mince the garlic and finely chop the parsley. Aim for tiny pieces of everything — the tinier, the better. Add the chopped and minced ingredients, the rest of the seasonings and the red pepper paste to the ground beef. Massage and mix with your hands for no less than five minutes,

Evenly spread the meat mixture on your prepared crusts. Bake for 20–25 minutes in an oven preheated to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

Aurelio Ruiz and daughter Alondra Ruiz Fowler,
Kiosco Mexican Grill

“Every tamale is different,” says 25-year-old Alondra Ruiz Fowler, eldest daughter of Kiosco owner and chef Aurelio Ruiz. “Every family makes them differently.” Her own grandmother, who lived with them when Fowler was a child, still, to this day, insists on thoroughly mixing the masa dough by hand. “I am never fast enough to do it,” Fowler admits. As for the accompanying chili sauce, she says that Mexicans make their own by burning the chilis, releasing a come-hither-if-you-like-spicy aroma throughout the home. “The worse my throat hurts, the hotter it’s going to be,” she says with a laugh. This dish, a tradition at big get-togethers, is one that Fowler hopes to keep alive for future generations. As for the restaurant, her dad talks about one day passing that on, too. “But he’s a workaholic, so he’s going to be here until he can’t walk anymore!” Either way, Fowler says she can’t ever imagine the 35-year-old restaurant not being there. Just another part of the family legacy..

Tamales

Corn

1 pack of corn husks 

Masa

1 cup manteca (lard)

1 teaspoon baking powder 

Salt to taste 

5-pounds “masa para tamales” (pre-packaged dough found at local Mexican markets)

1 cup of broth from cooked meat 

Chicken 

1 1/2 pound chicken breast, cut into cubes 

1/2 white onion, peeled

2 1/2 cloves garlic, peeled 

1 teaspoon ground cumin 

1 teaspoon kosher salt 

1 teaspoon chicken bouillon 

1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper 

Chile Sauce 

3 ancho chiles* 

3 guajillo chiles* 

2 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon manteca

2 1/2 cloves garlic, peeled 

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt 

1 teaspoon chicken bouillon 

1/2 teaspoon ground cumin 

1/4 teaspoon black pepper 

*Remove chile seeds to tone down the spiciness

Directions

Husks: Soak husks in a large bowl with hot water while cooking, ensuring they stay completely immersed for about 75 minutes. Dry thoroughly after soaking.

Chicken: Place chicken in a pot of water to boil. Add white onion, garlic, ground cumin, kosher salt, chicken bouillon and ground black pepper. Allow the pot to boil, then simmer for 75 minutes. Throughout this process, remove the foam that rises to the top of the pot. Once the chicken is cool, shred it all and place in a bowl, removing the bones. Reserve one cup of broth for Masa step. If using a different part of the chicken, shred and remove all the bones prior to assembling tamale. 

Chile Sauce: In a pan, fry the chile and garlic in 2 tablespoons manteca for about three minutes. Once fried, add chiles to a pot of 1 1/2 cups of boiling water. Allow the chiles to boil for about 10–15 minutes. After 15 minutes, remove chiles plus a cup of the boiling water used and add to a blender. Add seasonings and blend until mixture reaches a paste consistency. Fry mixture in a pan with 1 teaspoon of manteca over medium heat. Add about 1 cup of water and allow it to simmer for about 20 minutes until thick. Be careful not to burn the sauce during this step. Once thick, add to the bowl of shredded chicken and combine. 

Masa: In a large, clean, open counter space, mix the manteca and baking powder together. Once mixed, add half of the amount of salt. As you are consistently kneading the mix, add your Masa. Do not add Masa all at once. Add it in parts. Continuously kneading the mixture, work in the one cup of chicken broth. Add remaining salt and mix. Taste Masa and add salt if needed at this step. 

Assemble Tamales: Using a dry corn husk, spread about 3–4 tablespoons of the masa on the smooth part of the husk. You want to make about a 3 x 3 inch square that leaves about 1/2 of an inch at the bottom of the husk. Once your masa is spread on husk, put about 2–3 spoonfuls of the chicken and sauce mixture in the middle of the masa. Fold one long side of the corn husk, then fold the other long side over top. Finally, fold the bottom of the corn husk upward. You can secure the tamale by placing the folding side of the tamale downwards in the steaming pot in the next step or you can shred an unused corn husk into pieces to use as string, tying a knot over the tamale. 

Cooking Tamales: Using a stockpot with water in it and a steamer on top, distribute the tamales evenly and upright. The water should be low enough where the steamer basket can be inserted without touching the water. You want to place your tamales in the steamer basket upright where the tamale is exposed. Once you have evenly spread the tamales in the steamer basket, cover the pot and let it steam on medium for about 75 to 90 minutes. Water may need to be added periodically, depending on the depth; always make sure it is not touching the steamer basket. Once you can see that the corn husks are easily removed, your tamales are fully cooked. 

Serving: Remove the corn husk from cooked tamale and place on a plate. Garnish with shredded lettuce, chopped tomato, sour cream and a crumble of queso fresco. Take a bite and enjoy a delicious taste of a traditional Mexican meal! 

From High Fashion to Home Furnishings

FROM HIGH FASHION TO HOME FURNISHINGS

From High Fashion to Home Furnishings

A passage to India leads to design inspiration

By Cynthia Adams  
Photographs by Amy Freeman

Elizabeth Wicker’s home renovation is a living laboratory, where she tinkers with sophisticated, restrained design, luxe wallpapers and sparkling touches. And yet there is a disciplined approach, and no clutter.

In her dining room/home office, she recently created a credenza in her role as a Chelsea House designer. The piece, newly arrived, could be popped between the two new bookcases of her design, or be used elsewhere, she says. A small, blown-glass bull on the shelf was purchased at Modern 214 in High Point, however, redolent of her time in Spain, and is not her design. She holds it in her hand, thoughtfully weighing it.

An ethereal Douglas Freeman painting hangs between the two bookcases.

The dining table, doing double duty as her work table, is a glamorous Hollywood Regency style also found at Modern 214. “It’s the first place I go when I get to market.” 

The wall color used throughout much of the upstairs is a pale Benjamin Moore gray, number 1611, a favorite, trimmed with Decorator’s White in high gloss — a serene backdrop to art and furnishings. If it reads too blue with different light, she tweaks the tint.

“This is my house. My passion project.”

The graphic wallpapers Wicker chose 10 years ago when she first moved in still work. 

Cranes wallpaper by Cole & Son in the foyer is a favorite. Her older brother walked in as the house was being renovated and stopped. “Beeb” (her nickname), she recalls him saying, “this wallpaper reminds me of something from our house growing up.” She laughs and shrugs. (But privately, she’d wondered, had something in her past inspired the choice?)

Wicker’s home, however beautiful, is equally spotless. 

She enthusiastically describes snuggling on the neutral living room sofa with her poodle-Cavalier King Charles mix, Sienna Rose. (The settees and sofas are all custom-sized to fit each niche and space, a benefit of working in the industry.) “Only if she has her blanket,” Wicker qualifies. 

She sheepishly continues.

“I’m a little OCD about cleanliness.” Her friends tease her with a barrage of questions: “Do I have shoes for her to wear if it gets really muddy?” Yes. “Do I make her wear them all the time?” No. “But did I try when she was a puppy?” Yes.

“Sienna Rose has been the best thing for me.”

Wicker moves through her home, picking up objects to illustrate her design style. A line of mother-of-pearl boxes are personal favorites. Sales reps told her they were a little pricey, but she stood her ground. 

“Well,” she told them, “Let’s see if you can do it!” The boxes wound up being a best seller, she says proudly. But that is not always the case. Home furnishings sales are mercurial, with variables such as bad weather, poor market attendance or poor buyer traffic at any given market. A white cachepot of her design has remained a best seller for Chelsea House. She has another one out, and two new trays are styled on kitchen counters, one using mother-of-pearl. 

Among the 100 or so pieces she designs each year are personal favorites that don’t make it into production. If this disappoints her, Wicker doesn’t complain. Rarely, too, is she disappointed by a design’s execution in manufacturing.

Wicker pauses before a large Art Deco-style mirror template she taped to the wall behind her desk. She studies the physical pattern a moment while scrutinizing the computerized version on one of two work screens. Details consume her and must be exact.

“This is the reason I bought the house,” she says, leading downstairs, shot with abundant natural light and luxuriant space. 

The basement level is a revelation. Equally restrained, it is also light, youthful and fun, designed for comfort and also further design experimentation. Wicker camouflaged an unfortunately placed fireplace with antique mirrors and reconfigured the large space, where she formerly worked. 

She points out Chelsea House designs used in the decor here.

“Down here is a bestselling cocktail table, lacquered, originally detailed in gold leaf.” Wicker personally favors small cocktail tables with heft, which she says are useful when entertaining, substantial enough to not tip over.

A side table in crisp white with brass accent is a signature Wicker design.

The glamorous basement powder room featuring a graphic wallpaper and a “Material Girl”-era Madonna photograph is much appreciated by her close friend, lawyer Andrew Spainhour. He teases Wicker, saying, “Pardon me, I’m going to go visit Madonna.” 

He has dubbed Wicker’s downstairs her “Genie room.”

“Like I dream of I Dream of Jennie, where she went to the bottom of her genie bottle?” Wicker explains. She’s piled cushy pillows around the sectional sofa. 

A framed collection of vintage Vogue illustrations is a nod to Wicker’s fashion background. 

The basement opens onto a covered outdoor entertaining area with a louvered privacy wall of her design that includes a hidden jib door. There’s ample space for Sienna Rose to run, she adds, nodding towards the large yard. Here, too, Wicker’s neatnik nature is on full display. Dog toys are neatly stacked as her pooch visits Wicker’s parents.

“I sit at the end of that step,” she shares, clearly besotted by her pet. “Sienna Rose gets to the fourth step and tends to look back to be sure I’m still there.”

Upstairs, she describes having revamped bathrooms, then transforming spaces by hanging papers selectively for graphic punch. By claiming much of the primary bedroom’s closet, Wicker expanded a formerly cramped en suite bath. 

Striking details, like the impressive brass pulls on custom bathroom cabinetry, reveal a little more genie-style magic. 

“They’re actually tie-backs,” Wicker says.

An antique French settee in her bedroom fits her maxim: You “must mix the old with the new.” Wicker lacquered a vintage credenza to make it read more of the moment.

The artwork she acquired fits with elegant restraint. Nothing competes with anything else. She mentions two favorites — eye-catching, large canvases. One hangs directly in front of her work table.

Both are by Freeman, an admired artist and her friend.

“When he brought this over, he said he wanted this in the hallway.” Wicker was hesitant as workmen were still on site; she didn’t want it harmed. Freeman was insistent, hanging it where it remains today. It is all the more meaningful to her as he subsequently died.

She smiles wistfully; it is a grace note.

“It’s my little labor of love, and I love my home,” she repeats, then flashes an enormous smile.

When Elizabeth Wicker was profiled as a Triad boomeranger — those ultimately returning home — it still surprised even her. She never expected a return to Greensboro after a career-making move to the Big Apple, where she worked for fashion maven Nanette Lepore. 

Today, she sees a beautiful symmetry to her trajectory and believes here is exactly where she is meant to be.

“I’m a boomerang and I’m all down for it,” Wicker says. “Cecelia Thomspon [executive director of Action Greensboro] is one of my best friends here.” Thompson conceived the very idea of Boomerang Greensboro, which promotes those who formerly lived here returning.

Initially, a series of unfortunate events brought Wicker back in 2014.

A creative pivot from fashion to furnishings design was unexpectedly easy for Wicker. 

Years perfecting dressmaker finishes and finer details for haute couture lent itself to the granular detail she now applies when designing for home furnishings giant Chelsea House. At 44, she is enjoying a challenging career working with home appointments versus high fashion. 

Wicker is among 10 designers working independently for Chelsea House, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. 

How her reset unfolded is one part fairy tale and ten parts hard work. Her design evolution also involved a revelatory business trip to India. When Wicker returned to Greensboro, those parts meshed in a transformative way.

She was always an independent, free spirit, remembers friend Sara Jane Gibson, who has known Wicker “since we were in diapers in the same play group. I tuned into this in high school.” She noticed her friend’s unique dress style and eye for design. Wicker’s bedroom was pasted with a collage of varied photographs from ceiling to floor—anything that she fancied. “She had stickers on the interior roof of her car.”

It presaged her home, which became a personal design laboratory.

In her early years, Wicker was influenced by family travels. She observed how her grandmother “sewed everything,” and soon grew passionate about sewing and creating, even as a teenager. 

Wicker pursued fashion design at N.C. State after graduating from Page High School and studied abroad in Spain. Still in college, she produced handbags and clutches under her own brand, Isabaya by Elizabeth Wicker. “I didn’t keep up with the trademark,” she says.

When the televised design competition Project Runway began its popular run, watching the pace stressed her out, she recalls. Then a student, she couldn’t believe the show’s contestants made designs so quickly. 

Despite all that, Wicker confesses imagining she’d eventually study law and follow her father, Robert Wicker, in becoming an attorney.   

Yet design opportunity opened. She won an internship with Lepore in New York, where she remained for six years. This led to Lepore employing Wicker as a liaison between design and production. 

“Lepore was known for her details, embellishments,” Wicker says with admiration. “Intricate designs. Nothing was just basic.” The free-spirited designer matched Wicker’s own enthusiasms — “a little gypsy” spirit. “I loved working with her; it was so much fun, and living in New York was fantastic.” 

But a series of setbacks for the design house hit. (The designer no longer owns the brand and has since shuttered her studio.) Then Wicker’s rent escalation forced her to give up her apartment in March 2008. 

Yet she hadn’t contemplated returning to her hometown. “I’d had all these great experiences — it felt; ah, am I ready for that?” Then her parents ran into her former soccer coach, who works in the textiles industry.  He relayed a message to Wicker: “Tell her to send me her resume.”

She relocated to Greensboro and joined underwear-and-hosiery manufacturer Kayser-Roth. After a year, she met and joined Triad designer Bradshaw Orrell, partner of the late Freeman, and began working with his clients and, ultimately, managing the business. 

Orrell was already designing for Chelsea House. In the process of the firm working on their High Point showroom, Wicker had begun ghost-designing for Chelsea House, too, “which isn’t odd at all in the design world.” 

Then, a misadventure changed her career once again. 

Orrell asked Wicker to join him on a business junket visiting 26 India manufacturers for Chelsea House. She only knew they would be “seeing their capabilities and seeing products that were already in the works that we had designed.” 

Arriving in New Delhi in January of 2020, Wicker quickly cleared customs. Orrell did not. She watched helplessly through a glass panel with mounting alarm as he was turned back by customs officials. 

“They sent him back that night because his visa was not up to date . . . and I’m just his sidekick going on this trip!” Although she was familiar with the process of how furniture pieces are made, “I had never been in India, and didn’t know exactly what Chelsea House wanted and what we were to do.”

Wicker didn’t even know any contact names of those they were meeting.

Their prearranged agent, Parik, met her at the airport with knowledge of the itinerary. She realized she had to go to four appointments the next day, unsure of what was expected, nor how to navigate expectations. 

Gibson, who lives in Charlotte, called Wicker five times when she learned her friend was there alone.    

“I just knew she was going with her boss . . . she’s savvy and could have navigated, but I was just worried about her.” Gibson adds, “She’s always had a big personality . . . She’s a leader and a woman on a mission.” 

“It was mind blowing. Amazing. But I got so sick,” Wicker recalls. She had packed basics for stomach upsets and headaches that did little for her symptoms. Her whole body ached. 

“My throat closed up. It wasn’t until about six months later that I realized it was COVID.”

Wicker isn’t an adventurous eater at best, and now she had no sense of taste nor smell. Parik diplomatically told everyone she only “ate dry food.” She munched on crackers and granola bars. And kept going. Wicker never smelled the rich curries and spices that are the stars of Indian cuisine.

After that first day in India, she thought, “I can do this!” She had moved from “I have to do this” to “I can do it!” At night, she would collapse in bed, sweating and ill. She lost her voice and could barely communicate. But she soldiered on.

Factory managers would ask Wicker whether she liked things they presented, carefully waiting for her to speak. “I wasn’t supposed to be the main person, but they wanted to show me what they could do. Everyone was so respectful.” She could absorb the sensory richness — textiles and architecture — of India if not the foods and aromas. “The colors! I loved it all!”

With Parik’s help, Wicker completed the entire 12-day agenda on her own. 

“I loved it,” she repeats.  And her creativity ignited.

She had feverishly “designed about 75 pieces while in India in collaboration with the people at the factories.” 

She flew back on a Sunday, her health improving. By Tuesday morning she was back at work, sending out new designs.

Wicker was exhausted. Elated. And changed.

She also turned 40 that summer, celebrating with a group of friends who have long been in her life. Wicker walks over to a bookshelf and picks up a magnifying glass she designed for friends as a party favor. It echoed her love of some of the nostalgic family items she values.

After returning from India, Chelsea House’s executives called Wicker to express support. By November, their new president contacted her about creating another line of furniture — in two weeks. She managed while still working full-time with Orrell.  She continued both until 2022.

“I learned so much there,” she says of her 12 instructive years with Orrell.

But India had changed “my thinking and career . . . It was the turning point.” 

Her designs are also plucked from personal references and life experiences. An alabaster apple she designed from one of the reeded-front bookshelves literally reflects her time in New York, the real Big Apple.

This includes both furniture and “the jewelry” — her term for the accessories she designs, such as trays and cachepots.

“I put pressure on myself to give as many details as possible.” 

What is the narrative thread in Elizabeth Wicker’s design life? 

“Outside influences,” she answers. She went out into the world, like a design explorer, and brought it all back to her studio. New York City, Spain and then India became touchstone places.

Her Instagram page describes her as “chasing everything creative.” 

“It’s a matter of letting yourself go. You may not be great at something — but you find your way. Your mind, your heart, everything will tell you where to go. It will lead you, for sure. That happened to me.”

Random, even mundane things, can mean an epiphany.

“I found packaging — this piece of cardboard! The way it was cut out and folded, I opened it and thought, hmmm. This would be a great body of the lamp. A base!”

Or, while eating out West on vacation: “There was the coolest design on the end of the fork. Something I’d never seen before.” Her fellow diners were amazed she noticed.

“It’s definitely not one-two-three” she says. The design process is different every time. But she firmly believes in routines.

Up at 7, she religiously makes her bed and jumps in the shower. “I do things for myself. Alone time. Get up and moving, and Sienna Rose sometimes goes to doggie daycare or stays here with me.” Wicker is, failing calamity, working by 9:30.

“You’ve got to get in a routine, and I learned that long before COVID.”

There are long hours, too, she admits, “when you ask ‘What did I even get done?’”

Two weeks earlier, Wicker was on a getaway with girlfriends in Darien, Connecticut. While browsing the shops, she spotted one of her designs and had a moment. “This has never happened to me,” she insists. “The girls started saying, in high-pitched voices, ‘Oh my gosh!’”

The store owner asked Wicker’s name. “I turned beet red.” They requested a photograph of her with the piece. “It was a really cool experience. Then I looked over and spotted another of my pieces.” Her heart lifted.

What feeds her? Her parents were “guiding light people,” she praises. They gave her tools of self-reliance.

“They gave me the freedom to explore my creative side and to travel. No limitations set on me in the sense, I never remember their saying stop doing that.”

So she hasn’t.

Rituals for enhancing creativity? Noticing things. It may not inspire a new product idea. But perhaps the texture of a leaf, or the undulation of packing material, the mundane, pricks the subconscious inspiring a new finish. 

Sometimes just walking along a path does the trick. 

“Get a dog,” she winks.

The Modern Day Evolution of the Industrial Revolution

THE MODERN DAY EVOLUTION OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

The Modern Day Evolution of the Industrial Revolution

Heavy metal makes a comeback

By Billy Ingram

Covered in rust, covered in scale grease — no one wants that in their home.” That’s Chris Lutzweiler describing the Industrial Age metallic mastodons he scours the country for. Lurking under the surface of this Jurassic junk is what he sees as unimaginable beauty. Hidden for decades, fallowing in forgotten warehouses or lying flat in furrowed fields, there’s an unmistakable allure that is, as he puts it, “all hiding underneath.”

Hiding in plain sight to him, yet, to the untrained eye, nothing more than the detritus of a bygone era, unwanted, dilapidated tatterdemalions transform when, conducting business as The Rustic Factory, this metallurgical magician performs his extraordinary act of restoration prestidigitation.

A heavy-duty table saw dated 1930 has been converted into an impressive 30-by-50-inch drafting table featuring a new glass surface, easily adjustable both up and down, and vertical to horizontal. In a similar vein is a commanding boardroom table, spanning approximately 14-by-14-foot with an 8-foot base, topped with a $5,000 glass surface weighing over a quarter- ton. “You can literally crank it higher or lower with just one hand.”

Fashioning furniture from outmoded heavy machinery was a shabby — not- so-chic — concept embraced in the 1960s and ’70s, when lofts carved out of shuttered manufacturing plants were leased to bohemian artists and musician-types. These creative free spirits mounted tabletops over abandoned hulking monstrosities that weighed hundreds or thousands of pounds and were forevermore bolted into hardwood floors, thereby rendering the intractable practical.

Somewhere along the line, that forward thinking, backward-leaning sensibility tilted from hippie to Haut. High-end lifestyle purveyors like RHA and Restoration Hardware began marketing vaguely reminiscent specimens of industrial-looking home and office furnishings.

There are entire lines of steampunk-inspired executive desks and home furnishings scattered about the marketplace today, pleasing enough to the eye. But these too-cleverly designed pieces betray an overly-labored approach at approximating some fictitious exactness, so overwrought that any minor adjustment requires motorization. Mere superficial “reproductions,” they lack any genuineness or authenticity that made the genre appealing to begin with. Researching this stylistic phenomenon, Chris Lutzweiler realized that most of these ersatz thingamabobs-cum-household-accoutrements actually originate overseas. “I still loved the look,” he insists, “but I wondered what inspired that style? Where’s the real deal?” What he discovered is that those real deals “are egregiously expensive, shockingly so, and incredibly difficult to source.”

Born in Chaska, Minnesota, but raised in Greensboro, Lutzweiler never envisioned pursuing a career crafting one-of-a-kind furniture from sidelined tool-and-die contraptions resurrected from the turn of the last century. And yet, the attraction came naturally. “I’ve always been fascinated by the mechanical nature of machines,” he explains. “Any kind of machinery, any kind of engine, moving parts, anything like that.”

After about a year with little clue as to what he was actually doing, he says, “I spent a small fortune, but got started with a couple of authentic pieces.” Lutzweiler began retooling and simplifying complex machinery that could be employed as resolute office desks, dining room tables and the like from discarded dinosaurs of the industrial age.

No matter the source material, this is a labor-intensive undertaking. “There are people that like this style but can’t really go for the authentic thing because there’s a cost to it,” Lutzweiler says. “It’s not cheap, but a lot of people who reach out to me want the real thing.”

The first step is bathing any moving mechanical parts in a strong, penetrating oil — hardware, bolts, pulleys or anything else that will need to be extracted.

After allowing the oil to penetrate over several days, the original piece is carefully and painstakingly disassembled and cataloged for reassembly. “At this point, larger components are glass blasted with heavy industrial equipment outside of my facility,” Lutzweiler explains. “Smaller and more manageable components are done myself by hand.” After a century’s worth of rust, paint, scales, grease, and dirt are eradicated, only the cast iron or underlying steel remains. “This is a critical time as bare iron or steel will actually ‘flash rust’ within minutes.” The next step is mission critical, Lutzweiler insists, and if not performed immediately, the time- consuming blasting process will have to be repeated. “Freshly blasted metal is usually a dull gray or white, and full of residue and salts,” so removing that corrosive patina and achieving a desired, cast iron finish requires hours of high-speed polishing and wire brushing. “This is the longest and most intense portion of the process that brings out the beautiful, natural color of the metal.”

The clock begins ticking again, buffed metal needs sealing as quickly as possible before any rust can form. “Each individual component is sprayed with clear coating, then the entire piece reassembled and clear-coated again several times over, ensuring that natural finish is protected.” Lutzweiler once spent an entire workday preserving a single fastener: “Nearly eight hours to save the original bolt, where a new one would have sufficed. However, the customer wanted it as original as possible.”

When it comes to maintaining the structural and period-perfect integrity of these armored antiquities, Lutzweiler occasionally needs a capability beyond his capacity. With those unusually hard cases, he has turned to Scott Cain at GFC Machine in High Point, an automotive machine shop specializing in race car chassis construction, repairs and custom fabrication.

Cain recalls when this wannabe furniture-maker (prior to Lutzweiler even entertaining such a thought) first entered his shop: “It was years ago, when he was at GTCC’s automotive program.” For college credits while still in high school, Lutzweiler attended GTCC’s middle college, where, one afternoon, an instructor guided students through GFC’s workplace, offering some insight into what machine shops are capable of.

“I’m going to say, maybe five years ago, Chris started coming here to get me to do little odds and ends for him,” Cain recalls. Those “little odds and ends” often entailed work-arounds that would likely stretch the capabilities of the most accomplished machinist. “His stuff is extremely old and just a little problematic to get what he wants done with it, to get pieces to break loose without damaging the parts.”

“Scott is a great guy — he shakes his head every time I come in the door,” Lutzweiler remarks with a grin. “I have to give him a lot of credit because the man is a genius with anything metal and I want things to be authentic. If that’s how it was originally done, I want to do it that way; I don’t want to improvise. And he just wants to shake me sometimes.” It’s a fortuitous match.

“Any time there is a customer-facing welding spot, I’ll ask Scott to do ‘NASCAR-style’ welds that are cleaner and more rhythmic,” says Lutzweiler.

“Honestly, it’s all in a day’s work,” is Cain’s response. Recalling a particularly complex collaboration, he adds, “One of his tables had a set of gears that had four individual Acme thread posts that would elevate the tabletop. Yeah, that one was difficult. When it worked right, it kinda made me feel good because it was such a challenge.”

That particular item, a Portelvator adjustable hand-crank cart made by The Hamilton Tool Co. circa 1890–1930, was sitting, nonfunctional, in the lobby of a high-end fitness studio in Detroit, presently enjoying new life as a deceptively simple bar cart. “What made the whole thing tricky was every component had to be precisely in sync or the gears would lock up,” Lutzweiler explains, down to the threaded rods, sun gears, worm gears, pins and chains.

Lutzweiler’s venture has him traversing across East Coast byways, exploring the Rust Belt’s every loop, in pursuit of technologically primitive behemoths originally manufactured for carving out cabinets, window frames, dining room tables and the like; those machines that once made the furniture, in turn, will become furnishings. “Ohio and Pennsylvania are a treasure trove of authentic turn-of-the-century pieces.”

Of particular interest, many of the most desirable mechanical manifestations of Industrial Revolution ingenuity were forged right here in Greensboro. Lutzweiler describes one of those transformations as “a Wysong & Miles crank table for a molding sander that can now be a dining room table or an office desk. You can turn the hand wheel and it will raise and lower.”

Augmented with a glass top weighing in at 300 pounds, “you can adjust it with two fingers, it’s so smooth. It even says ‘Greensboro, North Carolina’ right there on it.” Wysong (sans Miles) has significantly downsized, but is still doing business locally.

A hefty Wysong & Miles Co. belt sander currently serves as the base for an executive desk, where floor-level hand-wheels turn with incredible ease to lift the 150-pound glass top effortlessly. “I actually polished each individual chain link by hand,” says Lutzweiler. While he can’t be sure of the exact date, he notes, “the machine had a patent number on it dating to 1896.”

In most cases the fossilized relics he’s uncovering were one-offs, built at great expense to specifications for specialized tasks. Inevitably, they ended up discarded by the companies that utilized them after an ignominious descent into uselessness, shoved into cobwebbed corners or piled outside into junk-heaped islands of misfit toys. Take, for example, a Pennsylvania casket factory crank table Lutzweiler unearthed. “It had been sitting there since it was purchased, according to the fourth-generation owner; they’d never used it in his lifetime.”

Although these aging bulls no longer emit whatever pitch they once played — one can imagine cacophonies of sense-dulling grinding, scraping, jangling — in silent repose, they elicit an instantly recognizable, weighty vibe. Native to hardwood floors, these pillars of grand austerity can’t help but add momentously to the vocabulary of any room, in particular lending an unmistakable sense of architectural symmetry when situated in an equally distinctive environment.

A celebration of hardware pre-software, there’s timeless beauty in a hanging throne, fit for royalty, improbably adapted out of a rusting artifact resembling something rightfully left behind on Skull Island. These theatric lounge chairs are constructed around pre-World War II engine cranes and elephantine factory winches once used to maneuver heavy equipment. “You can literally sit in there, take a nap, read a book, fall asleep, watch TV,” Lutzweiler says. And they’ve proved popular.

Although his company has a web site (therusticfactory.com), if mid-century Mad Men taught us anything, it’s that word-of-mouth advertising is the only sure-fire campaign — can’t fake that. “Clients will have somebody over for dinner,” Lutzweiler points out, “and somebody will say, ‘I want that for my boardroom, or a beach house — where do I get a table like this?’ And they’ll put them in contact with me.” Repeat business is something he’s become accustomed to. One gentleman, who’d previously acquired creations from The Rustic Factory, “asked if I could repurpose the wooden trusses of a vintage pre-World War I airplane into a chandelier with wings on either side. It’s all wood and completely encased in glass with run lights throughout it. This thing is probably 30 feet long.” Lutzweiler explains, “The wing lowers when he wants more light, raises when he wants it to spread out more, and it’s just a few turns of a handle. It was such a massive project, GTCC’s aviation program was kind enough to let me use their facilities to assemble it.”

For the same client, Lutzweiler painstakingly restored then assembled four Lineberry carts sourced locally from North Wilkesboro — and “usually fairly gross” to begin with — into a train to fabricate a TV stand. “It goes in a long, long pattern and it’s got a handle at the end. What I love about this is, it’s so ridiculously heavy — egregiously heavy — but we figured out how to make it so anyone can move them.” That handle consists of a pivot with a pin. “You just pick it up with literally two fingers and you’re moving a thousand pound train. It’s insane how effortlessly these things move.” Typically in that instance, artisans will take the existing wooden top, sand it down then scuff it up a bit. “However, I don’t want to do what everybody else does. I actually installed black walnut to achieve a book-match effect.” As much as Chris Lutzweiler is in the groove right now, there’s an inherent finality to the direction his life has taken. “These are depleting assets,” he says. “There’s only so many of them left.” It’s become something akin to a treasure hunt, rooting out what few oxidizing dinosaurs may be remaining, yet to be revealed. “People that know what these are in the industry, they all go for them at once, and it’s who can get there first and fastest. Sad part is, eventually I’ll have to change business models or do something different, which is fine — when the authentic pieces do dry up.”

Poem

POEM

October 2024

The Doorman at the Washington Hilton

Regal in his red cap and Nehru tunic,

he summons with a silver whistle,

depended from a silver tassel

around his neck,

a taxi for Jacob,

our first-born –

mere minutes to make his train

to Philadelphia, then another

to New York, and the plane

to Dubai, then Zambia.

How can it be that you raise children

for the world and they rush off to it,

places and people you’ll never see.

Is that your son, the doorman asks.

When I am unable to answer,

he tells me of his son, in Iraq,

his fear of the telephone

he can’t bear to answer.

All week, this man has held doors for me,

hailed cabs,

smiled as if he did not have such a son.

    — Joseph Bathanti

Worth the Wait

12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS

Worth the Wait

A designer and a contractor pair up and push the envelope

By Cassie Bustamante  
Photographs by Amy Freeman

When it comes to communicating exactly what she wants, longtime pal Erica Worth hasn’t been the easiest client interior designer Kara Cox has worked with. For instance, when it came to the design of the Figure Eight family beach house, Erica simply told her, “I want the house to look like linen feels.”

Erica straightens up in her seat and tosses her friend a side-eye, the corners of her mouth turning up: “I wanna make Kara work for her money.”

Kara continues to needle her friend, whose Irving Park house project the two have just wrapped up. The inspiration this time around? Erica presented Kara with one solitary item: a throw blanket she’d brought home from Ireland.

“Seriously?” Kara recalls saying. “A throw — that’s it?”

Her order was simple: “Make it look good in every room.” The wool plaid throw — in shades of plum, tan, gray and green — currently rests on the back of their family room sectional, just visible as you enter through the home’s front door.

The door itself is a work of art, expressly designed with a circular space intended for a large-scale, brass lion-head knocker reminiscent of Narnia, original to the 1996 home. “A labor of love,” according to Erica, it’s a custom-built, glass-paneled beauty that allows plenty of light to shine on the newly remodeled foyer and interiors, making it easy to see that the mission was indeed accomplished.

“In every house that I build, I try to put something that was there originally, whether it’s a light fixture or a door knocker or a piece of ironwork or something that belonged to that house,” says Erica. Serving as her own general contractor, she ended up taking the entire first floor of the two-story brick home down to the studs.

She hasn’t always been a contractor, though. In fact, Erica says, “I am fairly new in my industry,” having earned her contractor’s license in 2018 and subsequently establishing her LLC, Worth Builders. While the construction business was in her blood — her own father owned a lumber business and worked in real estate — by trade, Erica had been a practicing accountant for most of her career.

Originally from Elizabethtown, Erica moved to Greensboro in 2003 to work as an accountant for VF Corporation. Soon after, she was introduced to her husband, David, who grew up around the corner from their current home and is now CEO of Worth Industries, “a family of businesses,” including Innisbrook, Shamrock, Lewis Logistics and Capitol Medals. While the two had crossed paths at UNC-Chapel Hill, it wasn’t until they were both living in the Gate City that they really got to know one another.

“It was love at first sight,” says Erica, seated on a blue channel-back chair and wearing a knee-length chambray dress, her brown hair pulled back casually in a loose bun. With a laugh, she adds, “He didn’t know it, but I did.”

Eventually, the couple married, bought a house in Kirkwood, and started a family. With little ones at home, Elsa (now 17) and Percy (now 15), Erica left her full-time job, but, in order to keep some skin in the accounting game, sought a part-time role.

Through mutual friends and activities, Erica became acquainted with Kara Cox, who had just launched Kara Cox Interiors. The two even had daughters in preschool together and their second children, both boys, were just a year apart. They each understood the demands of being working mothers.

“I was looking for a bookkeeper and part-time office manager,” says Kara. “My office was so small we could not work there at the same time!”

“I was picking up paperwork and bringing it back to my house,” adds Erica.

The business growth exceeded Kara’s expectations, who assumed she’d work part-time while raising her own children. “Then it just snowballed and it got to the point where I was like, this is getting bigger than I thought it would.” Her office would move from the closet-sized space at Revolution Mill to a larger site on Banking Street and finally to its current location on State Street.

With that rapid growth came a greater workload for Erica. “Too much,” she says. “And Kara needed more out of me.” In 2016, after working for Kara Cox interiors for five years, Erica decided to leave.

Plus, in the meantime, Erica’s family — and its needs — had grown with the birth of her last baby, Percy, now 12. In early 2014, the Worth family moved into their current Irving Park home.

While no longer employee-employer, the two women remained friends and have collaborated on a handful of projects, adding a new relationship to the mix: contractor-designer. Now, Kara says, “We don’t really remember not knowing each other.”

But that time working for Kara opened Erica’s eyes. She left knowing two things for certain: One, like Kara, she wanted to work for herself; and two, she wanted to be a part of the construction and real estate world. “If I hadn’t gone to work for Kara,” she says, “I probably wouldn’t have been as inspired.”

Newly invigorated, she began snatching up and rehabbing rental properties not far from home, maintaining a part-time schedule and working within a 2-mile radius. But she and David had always said that when their youngest, Percy, headed into second grade, it would be time for Erica to go back to full-time work. Her solution? Become a licensed contractor. That way, she could make her own hours. These days, she plans her projects to run September through May, allowing her to be flexible for her family’s needs while also making time for the things that feed her soul — tennis, yoga, the beach and her beloved mahjong matches.

Green in her industry, she called up Kathy Cross of Southern Cross Homes, a general contractor with over two decades of experience under her tool belt, and asked her to meet for coffee. They traded pleasantries, Erica recalls, “And then finally she’s like, ‘What do you want from me?’”

“I want you to be my mentor,” Erica told her. Since then, she and Kathy have partnered on projects, including some brand-new builds. “She’s been able to show me the ropes.”

Shortly after Erica earned her license, she and Kara once again entered a working relationship when the Worths hired Kara Cox Interiors to design the family beach house in Figure Eight, damaged by a hurricane and in need of a revamp.

“Erica hired a contractor who really didn’t — ,” Kara starts.“ — pan out,” Erica finishes. She hadn’t anticipated taking over the job that far away from home, but she stepped up to get it done.

“Basically, during that process, she ended up becoming the contractor,” adds Kara. And that project became their first collaboration, followed soon by an addition on Kara’s Greensboro home, a client project on Dover Road and, most recently, the Worths’ own Irving Park home.

When the Worth family moved in 10 years ago, they knew they would eventually renovate. What they didn’t know was how long they’d wait to do it. “We thought it would be in the five-year time period and then time just keeps slipping by,” says Erica. “And so here we are.”

But that wait served them well, because now Erica was able to take on the role of general contractor on her own home. And, when it came to construction, she had lots of ideas stirring around in her mind.

However, when it came to the design aspect, she knew she wanted to once again hire Kara Cox Interiors for the job from the get-go.

“I learned a lot when I worked with Kara and I just know that bringing the team together from the beginning creates the best result in the end,” says Erica. So before construction even began, she worked on the building plans, bringing Kara along at that early stage in the game.

Together, the two women picked out cabinetry, floor stains, hardware, a new marble mantel for the living room. When it came to all of the finishes, “it was collaborative,” says Kara.

“For sure,” echoes Erica.

And, together, they enjoy trying new things, challenging subcontractors to tackle projects they’ve never before tried. “The only way to really change the trajectory of architecture and design in a city is to push the envelope a little bit,” quips Kara. Both women wanted to experiment with new ideas in this home.

Case in point? The cabinetmaker told Erica he’d never created the style of cabinetry she and Kara had selected for this project. Her response? “Good, I’m glad that you’re getting a challenge.” In the end, she says, he was thrilled with the result — streamlined, flat-front cabinetry with beveled edges lending to a classically modern aesthetic.

Were there challenges that came with working together? Of course. “We’re strong women,” says Kara. “We have opinions. I think that’s what makes us great friends. We appreciate that in each other.”

With a plan in place, the Worth family moved out in June 2023 and construction on their home began the following month. David’s brother, Jon, a bachelor, lives a couple streets over and welcomed the family into his home for the time being. Fitz and Percy lived in the main house with Jon, while Elsa stayed on the ground floor of the garage, David and Erica just above her.

While it was a little chaotic, Erica notes that their relationship with Jon grew stronger and her kids know him so much better than before. With a hint of sarcasm, she adds, “He probably misses the rowdiness.”

“He probably misses you cooking for him!” adds Kara.

“That, too,” Erica agrees.

On May 6 of this year, the Worths left their temporary quarters behind and headed for home,  ready to be in their own space once again.

There’s a moment in every big project, says Kara, where the clients are exhausted and just want to be done. “They have decision fatigue, budget fatigue. They just want to get back in their house.”

She likens a renovation to childbirth “because the moment is so painful, but when it’s finished, you’re like, ‘Oh, I can’t wait to do that again!’”

Standing in the newly renovated front entry, the year-long renovation feels well worth the disruption.

Before, you could barely even see the rest of the main floor beyond the ’90s-style foyer. And behind that? “A maze of hallways,” says Erica, resulting in an awkward flow and tight quarters. Everything felt choppy and discombobulated. To get to the kitchen, you had to walk through the dining room. And to make that happen, the dining room table had to be off center to allow for a walkthrough.

Now, the dining room features a new, warm-wood table Kara calls “modern classic” — centered, of course — surrounded by Klismos chairs. On the wall, flanking the newly installed almost floor-to-ceiling windows, drapes pick up on the purply-red tones in the Irish throw, the vibrant fabric popping off the cool green-gray walls. The pièce de résistance? Under a gold gallery light, a large landscape painting that looks like it was made for this room.

“When we did the presentation, we had all the colors and things selected,” says Kara. That day, Erica pulled out the painting, which had previously hung in David’s mother’s home. Kara couldn’t believe her eyes — it was perfect.

In the entry itself, Erica re-oriented the entire staircase, taking the foyer from two-story to one and adding a second laundry room upstairs — a huge plus for a family of five, including active, sweaty teenagers.

“We made a proper foyer and you aren’t confused about where you’re going,” says Erica. Plus, she points out three seamless doors that are practically hidden to the naked eye, wallpapered and disappearing right into the walls.

The wallpaper pattern is a simple tan-and-cream, large-scale, modern print. It took her some time to settle on that choice, she admits. “Kara was about to give up on me!”

“I was like, ‘We’ve seen every wallpaper there is!’” Kara chimes in.

In a “ta-da” manner, Erica waves her arms at the walls with a smile on her face. “Finally!”

With neutral walls, an entry rug features colors that unify the adjacent dining room and living room. “That’s all Kara,” says Erica.

The feature Erica is proudest of in the entry is a small architectural detail some may overlook — a brand new arched doorway that connects to the heart of the home. It’s a classic detail designed to give the house — not yet 30 years in age — a feeling of permanence.

“It was purposeful to make it feel older than it was,” notes Erica. Plus, she says, “I really do prefer classical architecture.”

“It didn’t feel like an old house before the renovation,” adds Kara.

As in an older home, that arched detail was carried throughout the main floor, repeated several times: in the trim on the dining room ceiling, in the family room fireplace surround, on the marble built-in bench in the en suite bathroom’s shower — off of a brand-new primary bedroom addition — and, lastly, in the tray ceiling created over the family room extension off the back.

They both pause and admire the new ceiling shape. “We’re the only people who will probably ever notice that this matches,” muses Kara.

“But I do think that women in general have a higher attention to detail than men do,” says Erica. “So when it comes to Kara being on a job site and me being on a job site, the details are in the project.”

On the far side of the addition, a built-in wet bar features light, modern cabinetry. But the standout? The aubergine-and-cream countertop and backsplash. While shopping for another client project in Charlotte, Kara spied this slab and immediately recalled Erica’s throw blanket.

“I sent her a picture of this slab and I was like, ‘Erica, this is it. This is to die for,’” recalls Kara.

Indeed, the details are in this project.

Beyond the back doors of the newly enlarged family room, the Worths added a large porch with a living space and outdoor kitchen. Eventually a patio with a grill will be added below, but, for now, the outdoor kitchen gets loads of use with its griddle, which Erica calls “a blessing.” Why? Because David loves to use it and often cooks the family dinner now.

While the interior kitchen remained where it was originally, the walls surrounding it were opened up and a larger window was installed. Surrounding the new window is a marble casing that matches the countertops. “Kara suggested that,” says Erica.

“That’s where I felt like we had a good time,” Kara adds, referring to the kitchen. Anchoring the space, a large oval island with fluted panels is topped by a dark gray-black marble. Opposite the side with stools is what Erica calls “the turkey oven,” because it’s large enough to roast the family’s Thanksgiving main course.

Another double oven is tucked away in the pantry. “Percy’s oven,” quips Erica, noting that the narrower capacity makes it perfect for baking pizza or chicken tenders. The pantry floors are classic, old-world black-and-white marble tiles. French doors inside are mirrored to create the illusion of more light and space. And on the counter reflected in those mirrored doors is the family pet, a cobalt beta, Le Bleu, named after Le Bleu water because “we own the Le Bleu distributorships around here.”

“What made you get a fish?” asks Kara.

“We’re not getting a dog,” says Erica with a laugh. Le Bleu swims peacefully, peering out from his glass bowl. Erica leaves the pantry light on for him.

Just around the corner from the pantry is a new custom-built, channel-back banquette, ideal for cozying around the table for family meals. A fabric pendant light hangs, adding a touch of color and shapely drama over the neutral table, chairs and upholstery. Too much drama? The baby of the family, Percy, seems to thinks so.

“There needs to be a crib underneath it,” he said when his mom showed it to the family before installation.

“A what?” she asked, certain she’d misunderstood.

“A crib.”

“Well, let’s just hang it and we can change it if it’s not what y’all are feeling,” Eric replied, ending the conversation.

Standing in the kitchen now, Kara rubs her hands together. “Oh, it’s so good!”

Plus, she defends her choice: “It needs that cool pop of color.”

It seems she’s a fan of the colors in the custom-made pendant shade. The dress she’s wearing features Grecian urns and she suddenly realizes it’s as if she meant to match the house’s color scheme.

“Oh, did I?” Kara says, looking down at her frock. “That’s funny!”

“She usually does match her projects,” notes Erica.

While this project is just nearing its end after a little over a year, Kara notes that she likes to “leave room for things to evolve,” even after a client moves back into their space.

“Take it slow,” she continues. “There’s a beauty to collecting and finding the perfect little odd or end and layering that in.”

What’s next for these two? Erica would love to do a custom build with Kara, starting from the ground up. “That would be fun,” Kara agrees. And though Kara is about to celebrate 15 years in business, she admits that she’s feeling inspired by the schedule and life Erica’s built for herself. Her own two kids are close to college-age — she’ll be an empty-nester at just 48 — and she wants more flexibility, too. “I am ready to take fewer projects and have more free time,” she says.

“I may be the only person in Greensboro who doesn’t play mahjong . . . because I have to work!” Kara says.

“I can teach you,” says Erica.

Clubhouse Rules

CLUBHOUSE RULES

Clubhouse Rules

You can have anything you want, as long as it’s salad

By Maria Johnson     Photographs by Bert VanderVeen

Gracious hostess that she is, my neighbor, Olivia Bonino, ushers me into her kitchen, the birthplace of many meals that she serves to guests who frequent the airy abode she shares with her younger brother, Connor.

Connor doesn’t cook much, but he does add a certain dinosaur-fueled pizzazz to the place.

Sitting at her plywood island, Olivia continues on the subject of food.

“This is where we prep it. Then they eat it. Some of it,” she says, explaining that her specialty is salad made from store-bought fruit such as blueberries, blackberries and grapes, along with “cucamelon,” a small hybrid cucumber that grows in her yard, plus a “secret ingredient.”

With that, she reaches out, grabs a branch of a scraggly plant growing at the edge of her kitchen, and pulls it closer to indicate that this is the good stuff.

“What is it?” I ask.

“Not sure,” Olivia says, adding that a guest once tasted it, and “he did not throw up or get sick,” so it has been a staple of her salads ever since.

A first-grader, Olivia saunters out of the kitchen to show off more features of her domicile, which she breezily calls a “clubhouse.” Others might call it a playhouse. Or a tree fort.

Call it what you will. It is her home away from home — like, 40 feet away from her official home — but it’s as much a refuge as any home, anywhere, at any price point.

The tour proceeds.

Here on the south side of the house, she explains, we have the climbing wall.

Here, on the north side, we have the wavy slide. She grabs a cord that dangles above the slide and demonstrates how, after descending, one might pull oneself back up the slide for another go, or, if she took a notion, rappel down the slide backward.

“That’s my favorite thing to do: walk backward,” she says.

We ascend the stairs to the second level, part the beaded curtains made from recycled ball-pit balls, and step into the 9-by-11-foot great room.

The view is stunning, taking in the emerald green outfield and part of the red clay infield of Greensboro Day School’s baseball diamond.

This was the home-run view that the builders — Olivia’s parents, Dominic Bonino of Greensboro’s Bonino Construction and his wife, Laura — wanted to highlight when they started making Olivia and Connor’s rustic haven in the fall of 2022, two years after moving into their home off Lake Brandt Road.

Olivia was 2 when the family relocated and Connor was not yet born, but Laura already had designs on a backyard getaway for the kids — and, occasionally, for the adults.

She was tickled to live next to a baseball field, given her family history. Her grandfather on her father’s side, Ken Keiper, was a well-known player, coach and scout in Western Pennsylvania. He was inducted into the University of Pittsburgh-Johnstown’s sports hall of fame in 2014. Laura remembers attending games as a child.

Moving in next to a baseball field as an adult, she was excited about watching games with her own young family. A couple of years after Connor was born, she pitched her idea to Dominic.

He had a blueprint in his head. It called for a deck, lofted and braced on three corners. The fourth corner would be bolted to a mature maple tree. Floating 6 feet above ground — high enough to see over the privacy fence — the deck would feature proper stairs, double-framed railings inset with welded wire and a gabled roof pierced by one of the maple’s limbs.

In the span of four months, mostly on fair-weather weekends, Dominic roughed in the perch. He asked his roofing subcontractor to send over a crew to shingle the gable and make it watertight around the branch. He asked several times.

“I think he was wondering if it was some kind of janky thing that wouldn’t support their weight,” says Dominic, who finally sent pictures of his craftsmanship.

“If I’m gonna do it, I’m gonna do it right,” he says. “I wanted it to be sound enough to where, if we wanted to get 10 adults up there, we could.”

Convinced, the roofer dispatched a crew. They gave the clubhouse a proper roof and used a vent boot and flashing tape to seal the hole around the tree branch, giving the maple room to sway and grow.

Soon, a wavy slide and climbing wall sprouted at the sides of the clubhouse. Laura gathered furniture and accessories, picking up pieces from family, dollar stores and the local Buy Nothing Project, an app that promotes member giveaways.

So far, her haul includes colorful handholds and footholds for the climbing wall.

Small plastic tables and chairs.

A couple of pillows that say “Relax.”

A thermometer that promises “Butterfly Kisses and Rose Petal Wishes.”

A plastic mirror salvaged from a baby’s crib.

A string of star-shaped lights, solar powered.

A dinner bell.

An eight-note xylophone for a doorbell.

A pouch-style mailbox.

A couple of John Deere license plates from her grandparents’ farm.

And a set of gymnastics mats, which Olivia, Connor and their friends pitch as an A-frame hut used chiefly for spying, Olivia says.

“By the way,” she says, nodding toward my yard. “Your bird feeder looks pretty low on food.”

When Olivia, her brother, and a constantly rising and falling tide of neighborhood kids are not spying and serving salads, they are often sitting at small tables, working on art projects. Sometimes, their creativity spills over to the deck railings, which are decorated with rainbows, illustrated menu items and other childhood hieroglyphics rendered in crayon and colored pencil.

And, oh, they watch baseball games.

They pull for the home team, the Bengals, during their spring season.

“Ben-GALS, Ben-GALS, Ben-GALS,” the pint-sized fans chant.

Once in a rare while, if they like the opposing team’s uniforms, they’ll allow a cheer for the visitors.

But they’re a heavily partisan group. If the Bengals are down, they have been known to heckle the other side.

“Your pitcher has a big butt,” they taunt.

Occasionally, Laura and Dominic call down their charges.

But that rarely happens because of the house rules, which Olivia distills to their essence:

1. No jumping or name-calling from the platform.

2. No ratting out people who break Rule 1.

Seated in tiny Adirondack chairs approximately 4 inches off the ground— I’ll worry about how to stand up later — Olivia and I take in the extraordinary view from her living area late one summer afternoon.

Cumulus clouds climb in the distance.

Traffic swishes by on a nearby road.

A breeze sighs through the leaves, casting a filigree of shadows on the pressure treated boards before our feet.

Does Olivia wish for more in her home?

Of course.

An elevator would be nice, she says.

And refrigerator.

And a bathroom.

And a zip line.

Still, these 99 square feet —198 if you count the ground-floor kitchen — give her what she needs.

A place to rest.

A place to create.

A place to wonder.

“It’s my mini-home,” she says.

Glorious Restoration

GLORIOUS RESTORATION

Glorious Restoration

A remade Reynolda landmark is beautiful to behold

By Ross Howell Jr.     Photographs by Amy Freeman

On a steamy August day, I’m driving along leafy Silas Creek Parkway in Winston-Salem, headed for Reynolda, the storied estate that is now part of Wake Forest University.

I’ve been invited to have a look at the top-to-bottom restoration of Reynolda’s gleaming, glass conservatory — the very first structure built on the property — before it opens to the public in October.

I turn at the entrance and pass the retail shops and eateries of Reynolda Village. Facing the parking area is a big sign that announces the impending opening of the “Brown Family Conservatory and Reynolda Welcome Center.” Just beyond the sign, I glimpse the glittering top of the structure formerly known as the palm house and greenhouse.

Work on the restoration has been going on for nearly a year, all made possible by a gift from longtime Reynolda supporters, Malcolm and Patricia Brown, who have three generations of family living in Winston-Salem.

I continue along a narrow drive, past walkers and joggers, and pull into a parking lot near the Reynolda House Museum of American Art. Completed in 1917 as the home of the R.J. Reynolds family, the museum now houses a permanent collection of three centuries of American art and sculpture, along with special rotating exhibitions and extensive online galleries.

I’m greeted at the museum entrance by Brittany Norton, director of marketing and communications. With Norton is the director of archives and library, Bari Helms. Prior to coming to Reynolda, she was an archivist at the Library of Virginia in Richmond. Finally, there’s Phil Archer, deputy director of Reynolda House. A native of Pennsylvania, he attended Wake Forest University for both undergrad and grad school, and has been with Reynolda for more than 20 years.

Helms has put together some materials, so we head for the archives. There, she directs our attention to a large rendering produced by Lord and Burnham, the premier builder of glasshouses in America during the mid-19th and early 20th century.

Helms slides the rendering toward Archer.

“Have you ever seen this?” she asks. “I found it in some boxes.”

Archer shakes his head, touching a finger to the edge of the drawing.

“I don’t think so,” he says. “Not with those perpendicular wings.”

“A little too ‘Versailles’ for Katharine, isn’t it?” Archer asks. He, Helms and Norton exchange knowing smiles.

Helms shows us a letter from a certain “Katharine” to Lord and Burnham, dated May 27, 1912. In it, Katharine details what she wants the conservatory to include — a palm room, a “good-sized” grapery, a tomato section, a large vegetable section, a propagating room and a “nice workroom.”

When Lord and Burnham responded with their plans and perspectives, and their quote for $7,147, Katharine wrote back that it was too much money. The greenhouse additions in the rendering were removed.

“In all her correspondence, you get a sense of how direct, hands-on and detail-oriented Katharine was,” Helms says. I don’t want to show my ignorance by wondering aloud who Katharine is, so I let them go on.

In December 1912, Helms resumes, Katharine wrote a letter to Lord and Burnham, complaining that the workers they’d promised had not yet arrived on site. In January 1913, she wrote again, noting that parts of the conservatory were not being built to her specifications.

“Katharine was very polite about it,” Helms says. “But insisted that she was making Lord and Burnham aware of the issue so they would fix it.”

No doubt they did.

And here I am, still wondering, “Who was Katharine?”

Those of you who know Reynolda just muttered, “Well, bless his heart.”

In my two decades living in Greensboro, until my visit today, I’d been to the estate only once, bumbling around Monkee’s of the Village, a boutique, while my wife, Mary Leigh, picked out a pair of Tory Burch boots.

So, for those of you as benighted as I was, here’s a quick study.

Born in Mount Airy in 1880, Katharine Smith Reynolds was a daughter of America’s Gilded Age and a wife in the Progressive Era of the industrialized New South. In the period photographs at Reynolda, she’s the young woman in the gorgeous outfits who doesn’t seem to be looking at the camera, but, rather, directly into your soul.

To this day, her spirit and determination inform every aspect of Reynolda.

Leaving her home in Mount Airy in 1897 to attend the State Normal and Industrial School — now UNCG — she later withdrew because of a typhoid epidemic and finished her studies at Sullins College in Bristol, Virginia. In 1902, Katharine joined the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company in Winston-Salem, where she served as personal secretary to the owner, R.J., a distant cousin who was 30 years her senior. In 1905, Katharine and R.J. married.

Between 1906 and 1911, Katharine gave birth to four children — at grave personal risk, according to her physicians, since she had been plagued with heart problems that started in childhood.

By all accounts, the Reynolds marriage was a happy one, and R.J. was confident in his young wife’s abilities, often consulting her on business matters.

Backed by her husband’s increasing wealth, Katharine began to purchase tracts of land near Winston-Salem. She would eventually acquire more than 1,000 acres, each parcel deeded in her name alone. Her idea was a Progressive one — to create a self-sufficient estate that included a country house, a farm utilizing the latest in technology and agricultural practices, a dairy, recreational facilities and a school.

The Reynolda conservatory was an integral part of Katharine’s design.

OK, class dismissed.

Archer and I leave the archives and head outside. As we approach the conservatory, he points out details — the iron skeleton of the structure, though all the glass and aluminum fittings are new; the foundations, built from fieldstones found on the property; the locations where the electrical lines are buried, hidden, just as they were when the village was being built.

“Katherine wanted the estate to look and feel like an old English hamlet,” Archer says.

“Burying utilities was high-tech for Katharine’s time,” he adds. “But that’s what she wanted.”

At the conservatory, I’m greeted by Jon Roethling, the director of Reynolda Gardens. He joined the estate in 2018, after serving as curator of grounds for the Mariana H. Qubein Botanical Gardens at High Point University. He has served in public horticulture and landscaping for more than 30 years.

Roethling’s been leading the restoration project.

He tells me that the work has been done by Cincinnati-based Rough Brothers (pronounced rauh), now a subsidiary of Prospiant.

“Rough Brothers has access to actual Lord and Burnham plans and molds,” Roethling says.

So, for the Reynolda restoration, the company could use templates on hand, extruding aluminum pieces to match the originals.

The tinted glass needed for the restoration was made by another company. Since it’s so specialized, the company only manufactures it twice a year. That was a big setback to Roethling’s schedule and delayed completion by months.

But the wait was worth it because the unsightly aluminum shutters added to the palm house and greenhouses in a previous renovation could be removed. Moreover, the manufacturer had the equipment to produce curved glass. This meant that the elegant shape of the original architecture — supplanted by the use of flat glass panes in a previous renovation — could be restored.

“When I walk into the palm house now, the architecture just sings,” Roethling says.

And there were the challenges of heating and ventilation — critical to a conservatory.

“We stayed with the original concept of radiant heat,” Roethling explains, “though the new system is very sophisticated.”

Ventilation was a trickier issue, since the conservatory is vented throughout — foundations, walls and roof. From the time the conservatory was built until this restoration, these many vents had to be cranked open or shut by hand.

“You have to strike this balance of having architecture that reflects 1913, but also having the convenience and efficiency of systems that are modern-day,” Roethling says.

“Knowing Katharine, one of the most progressive women of her time, I was sure there was no way she would want us to be hand cranking vents in this day and age,” Roethling continues. “So we made the jump to automated.”

The new system automatically responds to wind flow, wind speed and precipitation, adjusting ventilation as needed. Adjustments can also be made remotely, using Wi-Fi.

Recently, when Roethling noticed a thunderstorm developing nearby, he went to the conservatory to see how the system would respond.

“As the wind rose and the storm started rolling through, I watched the vents immediately close a bit,” he says. “When the wind grew stronger, the vents shut completely, protecting the greenhouses.”

We take a quick look at the welcome center, which is adjacent to the conservatory. It will be the orientation point for the facility. There are cabinet doors still to be hung and counters to be finished. In the future it will include plants, Reynolda-branded merchandise and historical information.

Leaving the welcome center, we step into the high-ceilinged palm room. The new tinted glass is working. While the area is warm, it’s not nearly as hot as I thought it would be on this sweltering summer day.

Walking outdoors to the open area in front of the conservatory, we have a full view of the central structure and greenhouses flanking it. The span, end-to-end, is more than 300 feet.

Sod has been laid the entire length. This will be a walking path for visitors. Between the edge of the sod and the foundations of the greenhouses are newly prepared planting beds, about 8 feet wide.

Roethling tells me that Reynolda has long been recognized for its peonies.

“The problem is, once the peonies bloomed out, that was pretty much it, visually,” he says.

With the restoration ongoing, Roethling wanted to do something significant about the peony beds.

“I needed someone who could do something amazing,” he says.

Roethling reached out to Jenks Farmer, a plantsman in Columbia, S.C. A published horticultural writer, Farmer served as director of Riverbanks Botanical Garden in West Columbia and was the founding horticulturist of Moore Farms Botanical Gardens in Lake City, both in South Carolina.

Farmer created a design for the peony beds incorporating other perennials that will provide visual interest throughout the growing season.

“Jenks is great,” Roethling says. “He loves balancing history with what’s relevant today. When he gets up here in a few days, we’ll lay out the beds and throw a team at them to get all the plants in the ground.”

Roethling smiles.

“It’s been a little bit like a three-ring circus,” he says. “I’ll breathe a sigh of relief when we open in October.”

Now he directs my attention to the conservatory.

“Each bay will have a different theme,” Roethling says. “This first bay will be in the spirit of an orangerie, which represents the birth of greenhouses.” (For the uninitiated, an “orangerie” is just what it sounds like, a greenhouse where orange trees are grown).  He explains that it will be filled with citrus trees, much like the original 17th-century orangeries in England and throughout Europe. The bay will also feature olive trees and other fruiting plants and will be used to illustrate a narrative history of the development of greenhouse structures over the centuries.

The next bay will be an arid greenhouse, featuring the five Mediterranean climates of the world — Southern California, the Mediterranean Basin, South Australia, South Africa’s cape area and central Chile.

“This will be a fun thing to educate kids,” Roethling says. “To explore with them how the plant palette changes, how the plants adapt.”

The central palm house will be elegant in its features. In big containers, there will be sealing wax palms with their deep red canes and tall Bismarck palms with their silver fronds.

“There will be a lot of texture — greens, whites and silvers,” Roethling adds. Visitors will be able to compare the broad texture of a palm frond to, say, the fine texture of a fern.

The next greenhouse bay will feature bromeliads, orchids and other flora that thrive in the tropics. And it will be about color — abundant, dramatic color. Listening to Roethling talk about this greenhouse, you hear his self-professed “plant geek” revealed.

“In here, I want to have freaky things that visitors walk up to and ask, ‘What is that?’” He smiles broadly.

The final bay will serve as a holding house for orchids that are resting. The plants will be organized by types, with interpretative signage.

“Even though the orchids won’t be in bloom there,” Roethling says, “that greenhouse will still be beautiful and educational.”

Just as Katharine would have expected.