Special touches

There are many things I love about our house, but the very best things are the special items we have that were made by our friends and family.

These door handles were custom made for us by our friends Zeke & Marty, very talented artists with a studio in Edom. They are jewelers now, but started their art career as workers in leather, metal and horns. I found a picture of a tree-like door pull in an architectural magazine. I took them the picture and asked if they could make us something similar. This is what they did. Magnificent, isn't it?
Z & M also created the wonderful leather and bone piece that hangs in our hallway and the painting in our bedroom.

The bathroom sink was made by Edom friends Doug and Beth Brown, the Potters Brown. Doug Brown was the first artist to move to Edom in the early 70s and has had his shop and studio there every since. He organized the first Edom Art Fair, which continued for over 25 years and has been reborn as the Edom Festival of the Arts. We chose the glaze colors with the understanding that the pattern would be up to chance, the kiln and the art gods. They all did good. You can see the lovely pattern of the wood of the countertop here as well. This is black walnut cut off our property years ago.

Speaking of cabinets, here's another look at the kitchen cabinets James made for us from wood off our land. You can also see more pottery from Potters Brown. I have a lot of their pieces. They are functional and beautiful.
Below is the material on our kitchen countertops. Not a very good photo, but it may give you an idea of the look. It is recycled glass in a resin background. Installs and acts like granite, but more colorful and more sustainable. It was manufactured in Plano, TX and when we went to pick out our colors, we discovered they used glass recycled in Tyler, so some of those chips could be from our very own recycled gin bottles. They have several glass colors, included clear, mirror and porcelain (which they assured us came from chipped, never used, toilets) and an array of resin colors. It has held up very well and needs no maintenance.