Dallas – Whitney “Anna” Walker repaints rooms as casually as some women swap out handbags.
Miyoga Ginger is the blue-purple shade du jour coating the walls of her Dallas living room.
Just days earlier, her mood was a bit more Hyssop, with the space steeped in a deep, earthy green and the nearby dining room washed in bright “Pistachio.”
By the time you’re reading this, the rooms inside Walker’s storybook Tudor will no doubt be on their way toward their next hue, perhaps a chocolatey Vosges Truffle.
If the paint colors sound good enough to eat, they nearly are.
Walker uses the food-grade Healthy Wall Finish developed by her Dallas-based company, Anna Sova Luxury Organics. The paints have no volatile organic compounds and are made primarily from milk products.
Walker says a fresh coat smells vaguely like a vanilla milkshake. Clearly, owning your own organic paint and furnishings company has its perks.
“My home is my workshop,” explains Walker, clad in a coat made from antique saris and sitting in one of her beloved carved wolf-head armchairs.
“I would never sell a product that I have not used myself,” she says. “I feel very strongly about that.”
Walker founded ecology-focused Anna Sova (Sova was her revered Austrian grandmother’s last name) two years ago as a spinoff of her Antique Drapery Rod Co. business. After a devastating warehouse fire in June, the Dallas store reopened this fall, offering the label’s full complement of wall finishes, bedding, draperies, towels, candles and accessories. The company also sells its wares online at antiquedraperyrod.com.
She has long been an advocate for green living (she gave up her hair dryer, calling it environmentally irresponsible), and stresses that being Earth-friendly needn’t preclude luxury or beauty at home.
To that end, Walker’s Gothic-minimalist cottage is a living showcase for her company’s ecocentric creations.
Walker deftly mixes green basics with antique finds from her travels abroad.
In the front guest room, a turn-of-the-20th-century Anglo-Indian bed from Calcutta gets luxury hotel treatment with 600-thread-count Italian-made linens. The bedding is made of organically certified cotton grown without pesticides and never dyed with heavy-metal dyes.
The rear guest room features a low-slung Indian platform bed and two Tibetan trunks. Suspended above the trunks are two 1880s Chinese palace traveling lanterns from Shanghai.
The raspberry silk duvet and pillow shams were finished with a 2,000-year-old process using natural Indian soap nut instead of the current industry standard of formaldehyde and silicone.
“As Americans, we consume more than 60 percent of the world’s resources,” says Walker, a yoga enthusiast who was raised on a North Texas horse farm. “If we choose eco-responsible products, we can change the world.”
But even an environmental entrepreneur needs a place to live. It took Walker six years to find the right house.
“I wanted a home that was all original with its period details intact,” she says.
Walker found it in a 1931 Tudor rich with angles and arches, nestled into Dallas’ Greenway Parks neighborhood that Texas architect David Williams designed in the 1920s. The home retains its slate tile roof imported from England.
Like her attitude toward nature, Walker tries to live gently here. For example, the oak hardwood floors are hand-
oiled, which gives them a warm, natural glow that’s different from the high-gloss chemical varnish most of us are used to. The resulting look is handsome and honest.
A shrine in the foyer decorated with Russian icons from Turkey and Kazakhstan welcomes guests. Organic upholstery in neutral colors softens the 100-year-old, dark wood British and Italian furnishings in the living room. Espresso silk drapes framing the home’s original mullioned windows add height and drama. In the corner stands an Italianate bar that Walker purchased from a friend and antiques dealer in Florence. The silver barware belonged to her grandmother.
In front of the mantel, a recovered fireplace settee makes an impromptu perch for sipping cocktails.
Dinner parties in the home are anything but small affairs. A sprawling dining room table reclaimed from a farmers market was chopped down only slightly from its original 18-foot length. Surrounding the table is a fleet of 14 Portuguese hand-tooled leather and wood chairs a century old.
On crisp fall evenings, Walker likes to leave open the French-style doors leading from the dining room into the gracious, stone-paved rear courtyard. “I’ve had the patio regraded twice so it won’t catch high heels,” she says.
“My home is everyone else’s home. It’s come and enjoy.” Even the scent of fresh paint.
