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| Tamara Hendershot painted her 1,200-square-foot 1918 house yellow, coral and baby blue. The interior is a mix of Caribbean colors and Asian textiles |
Tamara Hendershot shares Magic City Farm, her home here, with 4 dogs, 7 cats, 20 Muscovy ducks, 8 chickens and a 350-pound Vietnamese potbellied pig, all of which were adopted from animal shelters.
Magic city Farm sits with 8 other properties on an acre of land, all of which Tamara lets out for print, television and film shoots. Everything,
that is, except the 1,200-square-foot house where she lives and has
honed her aesthetic, which she describes as a mashup of Caribbean colors
and Asian textiles. In fact, it takes in more territory than that: the
furniture is covered in ikats from Indonesia and jewel-toned embroidered
Suzani cloth from Uzbekistan, and the curtains are sheer Indian
fabrics. It’s a vibrant, tactile mix that is somehow inviting rather
than jarring.
Ms.
Hendershot has lived in Miami since 1989, when she left her job as the
director of a photo agency in Manhattan. “I drove down to Miami,” she
said, “and never went back.”
Early
on, she owned an outsider-art shop. Then she began buying, renovating
and selling houses. She bought this one on the Little River in the
Little Haiti neighborhood of Miami for $260,000 in 2001, and spent
$150,000 on renovations. It came with a boathouse.
Five
years later, when she heard that the Magic City Trailer Park in Miami
was selling 20 bungalows that predated its trailers, she bought 6, for
$9 each, and spent another $100,000 moving them to her property and
renovating them, naming her little village after the trailer park.
With
her expertise as a photographer’s agent — and with a collection of some
500 pieces of fabric, including embroidered silks, linens and wools, as
well as quilts, coverlets and sheets — she can style an entire house in
a matter of hours. When she travels, she said, she always adds to her
textile collection: “I am constantly thinking of ways to change things
for the shoots, without much cost.”
Her
own house is constantly being redecorated as well. But she credits an
article in The World of Interiors magazine in August 2010 — about a
Russian cabin cloaked in layers of floral and geometric patterns — with
helping her crystallize her ideas about layering textiles. Casual
groupings of folk art and textiles from Africa and Asia punctuate her
living space, and pillow-covered furniture invites napping.
The
exterior, which was once “dirty white,” she said, is now painted
yellow, coral and baby blue. Just past the entrance gate is a lush
garden with more than 50 varieties of palms, several types of bamboo and
trees bearing various kinds of produce: mango, jackfruit, guava,
avocado, ackee and litchi.
Read the Full article and set of Photos over a the NYTimes
