Cottage for collectors

Southern Living, May 1996 by Hallam, Linda

One of the first houses built in Richmond's Ginter Park, this restored cottage retains its turn-of-the-century charm.

Once upon a time, not so long ago, Jo Anne and Tom Hale spied a tiny cottage. The two-story pink house waited at the end of a brick sidewalk on a wide, shady street in a quiet, old neighborhood.

The Hales, who had once lived in the city and had a country house, hesitated. Tom painted, Jo Anne gardened, and they collected lots of things. A tiny house in town really didn't suit them.

But they looked again at the house and its garden. It was spring; the sun was shining; the iris were blooming purple, and yellow, and blue; birds were singing in the oak and cypress trees. Accustomed to loving care from previous owners, the little pink house seemed to plead, "Buy me, buy me." And Tom and Jo Anne did. They painted the small, high-ceilinged living and dining rooms in shades of cream and marigold. They filled them with vintage furniture, art, and collections. Outside, they tended the gardens, repaired the old garden shed, and trimmed and shaped the boxwoods. They added an old church pew to the graveled area and hung a swing and baskets of geraniums on the front porch. Three years passed swiftly. Spring again. Outside, the garden behind the cottage is fragrant with early May. It's still cool enough for pots of pansies, but warm enough for geraniums, caladiums, and gerbera daisies. The iris are at their peak, standing lush and full in the curving bed that winds to the garden house. Elegant red cardinals and busy sparrows join Jo Anne as she adds a few more plants. Inside, sunshine-yellow ins ml a pottery vase in the dining room. Nothing is studied here; everything is casual. "I'm a designer by profession," says Jo Anne, "but I'm really a collector. I look at a house as a place to gather my favorite things." In the dining room, this includes vintage 1920s furniture, Jugtown-style pottery, and framed Audubon botanical prints. Tom's artwork-a snake he carved from river wood and painted joins in.

His art and Jo Anne's collections are even more in evidence in the adjacent living room. Tom, an art director and publisher, painted the room's two large canvases. Jo Anne collected the hunting and wildlife art that ives the room its character. Over the mantel hangs a particularly fine example-a circa1880s gravure lithograph by H. R Poore of Philadelphia.

Other favorites are pottery jars, decorated with personable dancing bears, that Jo Anne buys every year at a local outdoor arts show. This playful style is what the cottage and her collections are all about.

"My wildlife collections are serious, but serious in a creative, not a staid way," Jo Anne says. "The pottery pieces are whimsical, but they are beautifully crafted artistic pieces in their own right. Collecting is not just what we collect, but how we put it together."

For such passionate collectors, one of the attributes of the little house is the discipline it imposes. "If Tom and I add anything now, something else will have to go," Jo Anne explains. Such restraint doesn't diminish the pleasure they derive from their home. As Jo Anne says, "This isn't like a real house; it's like a dollhouse, a place to play and to be creative."O