ALL THIS
& GOLF TOO
Briggs Ranch home has
Italian charm, international
art and gardens in bloom

By KAY MCKAY MYERS
Photography AL RENDON

200-year-old Tuscan villa was the vision Gil and Dorie Hodge had for their 14,000-square-foot home at The Trails of Briggs Ranch overlooking Briggs Ranch Golf Club. A Tuscan villa they have, and the tile roof imported from Barcelona, Spain, is, indeed, actually more than 200 years old.

Gil is a developer of the residential property and the Tom Fazio-designed course located a mere 18 miles northwest of downtown San Antonio.The ambience associated with Briggs Ranch acreage, a former cattle ranch, is pure escape from urban hustle and bustle.

As the Hodges commenced construction on their new home, their Dominion house sold more quickly than anticipated. They fortunately have other residences, but in order to be near his Carrizo Springs office, Gil moved into an apartment in Castroville, north of Briggs Ranch, a space he shared with their pilot.

Dorie says, “That apartment was so small we called it a ‘compartment.’” It took that kind of rich sense of humor to get her through three years of building. “I told Gil that if it (construction) didn’t hurry up, it was going to be 200 years old before we moved in,” she laughs.

But it was worth the wait and inconvenience. John Moss was the architect, and Dorie relates the house replicates an Italian family home added to bit by bit, as children came along and as extended families stayed on with the immediate family unit. Hence, construction materials alternate between stucco and pillow limestone at the lower level and second level, which features a tower reaching to yet another level.

Once the house was well on its way, Gil was able to move into the tower apartment while construction was ongoing.

The pillow limestone is a story in itself. Each of the hundreds of limestone blocks was hand chipped on site to round out the corners and create the pouf-pillow contour. As for the ancient roof tile, with the first rain a little bit of Spain, long dormant in the porous clay, commenced sprouting in the form of lichen. It is difficult to put a dollar value on such charm.

The charm does not end there, however. Dorie explains, “All doors and windows were imported from Guatemala with the glass in them, and they got here without one pane of glass broken.” Through these arched doors and windows one catches the vision of other arches within the home. They are architectural features leading from room to room that confirm the Italianate style.

The width of the home is, for all practical purposes, one long room where rooms are accessed through a gallery with a vaulted ceiling. In many instances, rooms are defined by arches and columns. Ceilings carry mahogany beams in several architectural styles. Natural light streams in through both front and rear windows in many rooms. Few draperies are necessary, and those that exist are the regal design of Charles Forster, ASID, vice president of Orville Carr Associates Inc.

Floors throughout are tumbled marble. The creative process involves taking honed marble and
distressing or aging it by tumbling it in a machine to remove sharp edges and lend a soft character to the tile. Dorie points out that the large floor expanse mandated varying the size of the tiles and the installation patterns throughout the house — a plan that enhanced the feel of rooms constructed at different times.

The numerous fireplaces hold carved marble mantels. Fireplace screens and accompanying tools are the work of Givens Metalcrafts of Ingram.

Walls are Venetian plaster, a process that builds upon a chicken wire foundation followed by copious layers of plaster. With the exception of the interior entry walls, they are the natural shade created in the troweling. In other words, they are unpainted. “The more a wall is troweled, the lighter the color,” says Dorie. “The builder wanted to put rock in the wall, but I felt it would be too cold and feel more like you were in a castle.”

The grand entrance or receiving parlor is a wall of a different color, thanks to Dorie’s creativity. “Walking down the hall one day, I thought to myself, ‘What can I do in the entry?’” She found a practice board for the plaster work, dipped into some stain left by cabinetmakers who had been staining on site, rubbed some stain on the plaster and let it dry. Then she topped the stained plaster with beeswax and polished it to a velvety sheen. Voila, a warm and rich tanned finish. Soon there were artisans successfully replicating her experiment throughout the entry.

“It was just an accident,” she laughs, “from (watching) too much HGTV (Home and Garden Television).” Accident? Not at all — just modesty coming from this petite blonde homeowner, who is a gifted and experienced interior designer. She did all the interior design planning and execution for her home. It has been featured on Designing Texas, hosted by Jocelyn White and seen at 10 a.m. Sundays on KENS-TV.

Flanking the entrance are near-life- sized bronze statues of dancers from a Thai palace. They were purchased at auction in Bentonville, Ark., for the bathroom in a former home in Atlanta. When asked at auction about their destination, Gil’s quick wit (so similar to Dorie’s) emerged as he quipped, “We’re going to hang our wash cloths and towels on them.”

Centering the entry is a round table swirled with pleated silk upon which rustic urns are topped with whimsical monkey figures dressed as court jesters. “I’m the queen of table settings,” smiles Dorie. “You can’t always eat on them, but I think the more junk, the merrier.”

Anchoring the formal living room is an enviable acquisition — a highly lacquered and decorated desk almost 400 years old. It is a reproduction of a much older museum piece. Two seating areas are served by earth-tone sofas in cut chenille. A massive coffee table near the fireplace has a top that recedes to reveal storage space large enough for “a hide ‘n’ go seek place,” observes Dorie.

Torchiere columned lamps flank the fireplace — one purchased at a merchandise mart while the identical companion fixture was picked up later in a resale shop. What are the odds? Another serendipitous acquisition is the bargain-priced, albeit exquisite, gateleg table behind one sofa that is a close facsimile of one at the back of the sofa across the room — this one a genuine antique of incredible value.

En route to the master suite, one finds Gil’s office behind French doors. It comes complete with a temperature-controlled two-station computer room.

The master suite is awash in zebra and cheetah print fabrics on furnishings and pillows. They are coupled with rich burgundy solids and Old World floral print on the walnut and leather sleigh bed. “I liked animal prints many years ago when you had to search for them,” declares Dorie. “They spark things up, and I will like them long after they are no longer a fad.”

The room-size rug sporting a hunting theme is from Iran. Its black background is evidence it was intended for royalty. Dorie says the rug dealer advised her it was made for the late Shah of Iran just prior to his exile. Perhaps so and perhaps no, adds the homeowner. The ceiling holds rich mahogany beams. A multi-room master bath and totally outfitted exercise room complete the suite.

The bath features a “drive-through shower,” laughs Dorie. Sans doors, the generously elongated area offers total privacy with entrances at each end of a curved wall. A roomsize closet is configured ceiling to floor with custom mahogany built-ins.

Returning to the center of the home via the gallery, one arrives at the formal dining room adjacent to the grand entrance. The room is a columned elliptic — a shape which required creation of a custom dining table. Overlooking all is an enormous painting of two horses that once graced the couple’s Atlanta country club.

The nearby wine room with a wrought iron door offers a surprise, as one wall conceals a storage area in which future residents can hide the family silver — in the spot where Dorie now stores glass vases.

Paintings and sculpture abound in this home. “Bronzes are my weakness,” confesses Dorie, “and you will see they are mostly animals and children.” The couple’s collection reflects a wide range of themes. “You start with Oriental and end up cowboy,” she says. In between are classic English and Italian works along with rare art from India depicting the lifestyle of ancient royalty.

Whimsy they have as well, created by an artisan whose work graces Disneyland and Disney World. Three larger-than-life-size cowboys (on the order of Pecos Bill) line the den wall, shotguns at the ready for a hunt. The 50 quail that belong in the scene are in storage, says Dorie.

The Indian art and Oriental prints and paintings by Osuka can be found primarily in the gallery leading to two guest suites on the first level and up the stairwell to the tower apartment. “We are the largest collectors of Osuka’s art,” comments Dorie. She explains that his paintings on silk are created with tightly rolled plastic wrap, and one tiny error by the tip of his devised plastic “pen” means a canvas is destroyed.

Numerous paintings hold special meaning. There is the English work that graced the home of legendary actress Mary Pickford. A valuable Frederic Remington bronze joins the creation of Robert W. Broshears called Tendin’ the Herd. It depicts, in one-third life size, a horse and its rider, who would be 6’1” with size 11 shoes, says Dorie. It sits on a granite kitchen countertop.

There is a special work found in the informal living space beyond the kitchen. For the couples’ 25th wedding anniversary, friends commissioned a painting of their two dogs at the time — a yellow Labrador retriever and a pound puppy. The artist, Mary Clare Bromley, insisted on seeing and visiting with the dogs while the Hodges were away from home. Dorie notes the forlorn look on their faces “because I was gone,” she laments.

That pound puppy still thrives, says Dorie, and lives in Atlanta with the Hodges’ daughter and son-in-law, Kristi and Donald Fischrupp, and their granddaughter, MacKenzie. The couples’ son and daughter-in-law, Kelly and Elsie Hodge, also live in Atlanta.

Another work was an anniversary gift from Gil. It combines a wood sculpture frame in three dimensions with a mirror etched as if reflecting the sculptured scene. The theme is that of an Irish setter peering through rushes at waterside. There is subtle lighting within the mirror, and a recent short in wiring added a little unexpected “lightning” to the scene. The work turned out to be prophetic. The couple had no Irish setters at the time but now own two brought straight from Scotland.

The terraced backyard and rolling lawn overlooks the golf course. Twelve grasses thrive in areas according to their specific agricultural requirements. Some are more sun- tolerant than others. The Hodges own a grass farm and are knowledgeable environmentalists. The flower beds, front and back, are a butterfly/ hummingbird heaven as lush plants, native to their environs, thrive and bloom gloriously.

Recently a group of senior citizens followed a lecture on butterflies with a trip to the Hodge gardens. “Never before had we seen so many butterflies as we did that day,” says Dorie. One visitor commented on the amazing phenomenon, and Dorie surely brought gales of laughter with her mischievous and richly humorous tongue-in-cheek response, “Yes, I think we’re going to have to spray.”

As for the Tom Fazio-designed Briggs Ranch Golf Club at the foot of the Hodges’ lawn, it was recently ranked by Golf Week magazine as No. 39 on the list of America’s Best Modern Courses. That is a pretty special extended backyard.