Imagine a large, elegant Tudor-style home constructed in 1925 during Prohibition. The owners — defying the laws of the time — had two liquor storage areas built into the home: a sliding cabinet behind a bookcase and a wine cellar built into the dining room wall.
Or, like a character out of a 1920s English mystery novel, picture yourself wandering about this estate, through the gardens and the home’s many rooms, up a spiral staircase wedged into a turret.
IF YOU GO
WHAT: BSO Associates’ Decorators Show House, Woodholme
WHERE: Pikesville, Md.
WHEN: May 8-30
DISTANCE: About 40 miles from D.C.
MORE INFO: 410-783-8000, bsomusic.org
This time-travel adventure lies waiting less than an hour’s ride north of the District, as the Baltimore Symphony Associates host their 34th Annual Decorators Show House, a fundraiser to benefit the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s education programs. The elegant Woodholme residence in Pikesville, Md., is this year’s chosen venue for Maryland’s leading designers to strut their stuff for your inspection. With its previous occupant deceased, the owner’s son gladly donated the home (which will later go on the market) to the cause.
“Everyone loves to nose around someone else’s house,” said designer Laura C. Kimball, president of the American Society of Interior Designers’ Maryland chapter, who has chosen to redecorate the home’s laundry room. “It’s a wonderful opportunity to get ideas and to purchase things that they wouldn’t necessarily see anywhere else.”
Indeed, a good number of accessories and furnishings throughout the home’s decorated rooms are for sale. There is also an entire dedicated area filled with items for purchase.
Because each of the 24 rooms has been decorated by a different designer, the show offers a wonderful opportunity to chat with a professional in many of the rooms.
Pat O’Brien is an artist who has been assigned to decorate the walls of the home’s foyer, staircase and upstairs hall.
“This is a beautiful stone home with elements that remind you of a castle,” she said. “The front of the home has a great big turret that is the [indoor] foyer and circular staircase.”
O’Brien has taken that castle feel and integrated it into her artwork for the walls, one being a 5-foot-by-5-foot wall hanging of a dragon.
A unique mixture of tastes and styles guarantees an interesting trip through this “castle.”
“These [show houses] are living magazines, and people have an opportunity to walk through their pages,” Kimball said.
