Spaces Comfort

10E

SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS

D

SATURDAY, APRIL 7, 2007

SPACES

PHOTOS BY GLORIA FERNIZ/STAFF

A settee and two Windsor chairs provide seating around a tilt-top chair table in the dining area of Harriette Gorman’s home in Comfort. The house will be part of a tour April 14.

Antiques collector rescues former armadillo farm from ruin, fills it with treasures

PLACE OF HISTORY BY TRACY HOBSON LEHMANN EXPRESS-NEWS HOME & GARDEN EDITOR

C

OMFORT — At 82, Harriette Gorman is one of the youngest things in her house. Heck, she has tallow candles that qualified as antiques

when she was born in 1925. And by then, some of her chairs exceeded the definition of antique by a century. “To me, a true antique is at least 100 years old,” says Gorman, who two months ago moved into a German farmhouse that itself qualifies as an antique. Completed in 1898, the two-story house behind a wattle fence has a history fittingly rich for the owner’s collection of collections.

ABOVE: In the living room, Queen Anne sconces hang beside a primitive painting of a trio of girls huddled under an umbrella. The painting is above a huntboard set with a collection of stone fruit. RIGHT: A portrait of George Washington presides over the library, a room especially rich in history.

She purchased the property, formerly an armadillo farm, just outside Comfort six years ago. Then, the porch and balcony that grace the front

Harriette Gorman treasures a portrait of Thomas Jefferson that hangs in the library.

of the house were crumbling, but what Gorman describes as the deplorable condition of the structure didn’t deter her. “I moved out here to get another challenge,” says Gorman, no novice at renovation as she faced seven deteriorating buildings on the five

Keyword: SALife For more photos of Harriette Gorman’s home and a look at past Spaces features

See LIFETIME/11E

H OUS E R ULE S Hidden treasures History abounds in the furnishings of Harriette Gorman’s house. She believes in using what she has collected, everything from 17th- and 18th-century chairs to fabrics woven in the early 19th century, but she’s not out of touch with the 21st century. Some modern conveniences can become inconveniences when it

comes to aesthetics, so she tucks them out of sight as much as possible.

TUNING OUT TELEVISIONS “We all strive to find something to put our TVs in,” Gorman says of antiques aficionados. In the living room, she tucked the tube into a hand-grained corner cabinet. In the kitchen, the set sits behind the doors of a newly built corner cabinet.

PARK THE APPLIANCES “When they said, ‘Do you want a garage in your kitchen?’ I thought they were crazy,” Gorman says. But she visits the “garage” every morning to access her coffeemaker. She also stashes other appliances behind the door beneath the television in the corner cabinet.

HOLD THE PHONE In her bedroom, Gorman displays a handmade silk folding

bonnet and other items atop a maple chest. She tucks her telephone discreetly behind a lamp on the chest.

PUT A LID ON IT A display of firkins — lidded buckets — and churns bring a dash of color to the kitchen with their faded blue and green paint. But they are utilitarian, too. “That’s where I keep dog food,” Gorman says. — Tracy Hobson Lehmann

A mug holds flowers beside some old books, complementing the view of the farm.