Home at Last
alive and well
Two decades after Santa Fe Style was published, a dozen design trends have come and gone, but the basic essence continues to inspire Southwestern home design with its down-to-earth, thoughtful, pitch-perfect aesthetics.
Famed for decades as a place with unique light, Santa Fe regularly puts on a show. A glimpse of yellow and rose light in the early mornings and evenings can fill you with a profound sense of gratitude for being alive.
This red gate with its annual draping of wisteria must surely be one of the iconic images of Santa Fe in the summer. In out-of-the-way places like this, Santa Fe demands a certain interaction from the viewer, a sense of adventure and discovery, a willingness to poke around and find what there is to see.
The forceful architectural detail and mass in an old adobe creates an instant interior ambience, often enhanced by collections of art and folk art. Each element of this corner vignette in the author’s home is modest on its own, but the combination of small Mexican painted chests with one stellar large one against a vibrant wall color exceeds the sum of its parts.
In the bleached beauty of curving bones, often juxtaposed with flowers, painter Georgia O’Keeffe discovered a complete visual metaphor of death and life, harshness and delicacy in something random and found, while establishing an iconic image literally repeated in many homes.
Santa Fe is famous for its moments of seeming design happenstance that can fill calendars and postcard racks. Such visual whimsy as this matching pickup and home give the accidental viewer the sense of having come upon a gift.
Selected Home at Last articles:
On the Street Where I Live
Our Blue Heaven
A Dreamy Little Home
Person to Person
This article first appeared in Spring II 2008 Su Casa
More than 20 years and 14 printings later, Santa Fe Style is alive and well—the book, that is. But what about the style itself? Has it survived the rigors of such intense popularity? Just like howling coyotes, Frida Kahlo, Britney Spears, plaid, and aviator glasses, the thought of Santa Fe style can be accompanied by a sense of ennui, if not a tinge of nausea. Enough already.
Have we had enough—those of us who live at Santa Fe style central? Yes, of course. We are weary of our very style of life being confused with someone’s idea of a marketing campaign for perfume, shower curtains, SUVs, or whatever, often with our beloved adobe serving as a backdrop for a cheesy Western scene propped up by a very tall, thin young woman with a saguaro cactus thrown in to keep the confusion alive. Along with being weary of the excessive use and perpetual misinterpretations of what is, in fact, our lives, we are most of all upset that something so fundamental, simple, and honest could be turned into something commercial and tacky.
Unfortunately, what was once a style of vernacular architecture derived from centuries of living became mucked up with the fashions of the late 1980s. Fashion, and its roller coaster ride of change, can wreak serious havoc on style, leaving style by the wayside as it barrels on to the next outpost. We are told that Santa Fe style is long dead, meaning that the fashion industry has used it for its purposes and has now, by necessity, moved on to something new. With any luck we can get them to cart off their saguaro cacti.
Besides being fodder for fashion, Santa Fe style has also been a terrific design source for many people living in the West, especially the desert Southwest, as they search for a way to have their homes reflect their lives. Those of us who live with Santa Fe style as a matter of choice and proximity should not lose sight of the very real beauty and benefits of living with a regional style that has become not only indigenous to, but synonymous with, a very important area of the country. At its heart, Santa Fe style is the fusion of historic forces, the demands of the natural world, and the aesthetics of thoughtful, down-to-earth people. As a result of our history, we have a style of architecture and design that has a unique and special relationship to our region and that is immediately recognizable the world over. All of this is cause for celebration, so to kick off the fiesta let’s have a go at how to have the complete and authentic Santa Fe style experience.
To begin with, to have the full-blown “experience” you must consider living in a genuine Santa Fe home. This means adobe, the real stuff, which also means lots of TLC at all times. Up top, ceilings must be of hand-hewn beams and other wood elements, and the roofing should be a mixture of known and mysterious elements that shift and sift through time. Beyond the materials, there is age. Unlike other aspects of life, in this case, older is better. Just like older beings, vintage homes give off an air of unpredictability and charm. Throw in a historic neighborhood, which means you are surrounded by said charm and a certain geezer crankiness (but live in a zero-parking-space zone), and you have the makings of life as practiced by the complete Santa Fe style guru—me.
Despite the fact that I have been immersed in the world of Santa Fe style through writing, I haven’t always lived at the epicenter of the experience. Living outside the city in a faux adobe for more than 20 years, I had my nose pressed to the glass, gazing in and longing for the real thing. When the opportunity arose to make the move to what I considered the ultimate Santa Fe style experience, I leapt like a lunatic. At the time, I was shocked at how much I wanted it—the real thing, the little house on the acequia.
Ten years and lots of water down the acequia later, I can report to you from Santa Fe central that what was created here over the centuries is pretty darn special, worth the loco behavior on my part, as well as worth keeping alive and emulating—even if the full-on experience might not be possible. What I have learned from living at the birthplace of the style is that far from being an accidental happenstance, it came into being in a very conscious way. As early as 1912, the city was taking steps to recognize and incorporate special design elements into individual buildings and to lay out the city in ways that would reflect its early design heritage. The style’s original framers were classic founding fathers and mothers in that they knew their baby very well and were determined to bring forth something so special that it would have an independent life of its own.
To say that they succeeded would be an understatement. At this point, Santa Fe so well knows itself, and where it came from, that it can dismiss as frippery and fuss all the passing phases and outrages it might be subjected to from time to time. While stalwart committees and foundations conspire to nail down and codify Santa Fe style, hearty individual homeowners soldier on with the business of keeping very old buildings alive and lovely or building new homes that look as rooted to place as those of the past. Like any great enterprise, the city must rely upon a large number of individuals working in harmony to create something beyond any single being’s capabilities. Finally, the truly ephemeral lifts this place to a realm where fashion can never follow, a place beyond commerce, where lilacs bloom, piñon smoke fills the air, and the seasons change without thought to the exchange of monetary units.
Experiencing such things is part of something far greater and more complex than architecture or design. Whether it is called lifestyle or life itself, this awareness of the physical world, with its gifts and its very fragile and transient nature, is more apparent in Santa Fe. This unexplainable quality makes Santa Fe a “city different” by virtue of design, as well as by some unique and ultimately inexplicable blending of people, place, time, and nature.
Christine Mather is a museum curator, as well as an author of Santa Fe Style, Santa Fe Houses, Native America, and True West, volumes that explore design and lifestyle.