By ANNE GELHAUS
Those who tour the San Jose Symphony Auxiliary's 19th annual Designer Showcase house, which opens May 11, might want to stop by the garage to check out creations by two Sunnyvale decorators.
This year's showcase features tours through a 6,000-square-foot, custom-designed house in San Jose's Almaden Valley. The two-story house includes more than 25 rooms by numerous local interior designers and decorators. The garage has been converted into a boutique, where others in the design profession will sell their wares.
Sallie West will bring about 50 prints of original artwork. Rather than printing the originals on paper, West adheres them to canvas and then repeats the artists' original brush strokes with a clear mixture.
"It adds texture and dimension to a print, so it looks like the original," says West, who creates the prints in her Sunnyvale home. "I can't change what the artist did; I'm just enhancing it."
West says she'll be selling prints of both contemporary and master works at the symphony showcase.
"I'll have lots of things men would be interested in," she adds. "At last year's showcase, that's what people kept looking for."
Sunnyvale tassel-maker Darcy MacLeod is participating in the showcase for the first time this year. She has sold her tassels at similar showcases in Marin and San Mateo.
"The response was really good at the other two showcase houses," MacLeod says. "People come in to look at interior design."
MacLeod says most people who don't have a background or interest in interior design have no idea what to do with her tassels. Decorators, however, use them to adorn window shades and pillows, tie-back curtains or ring napkins.
"In Europe, they're everywhere," MacLeod says. "I decided to make them because most tassels on the market are traditional European style, and I thought I'd make more contemporary styles."
Like West, MacLeod works out of her Sunnyvale home, making tassels on a machine she and her husband fashioned from an old juicer. MacLeod completes her tassels with hand-painted wooden beads.
In addition to her tassels, MacLeod will be will sell hand-painted papier-maché boxes at the showcase boutique.
The emphasis of this year's showcase is on the beauty and history of the house and its Almaden Valley environs, where cinnabar (now called quicksilver or mercury) was mined from the nearby hills.
An opening gala, "Fiesta Elegancia de los Rancho San Vicente y Almaden," takes place May 9 at the Almaden Valley Country Club, with a ribbon-cutting ceremony at 6 p.m., followed by cocktails and dinner. Cost is $75 per person; reservations are required. Rancho San Vicente comprises more than 4,000 acres of land granted by Mexican Governor Alvarado to Jose de Los Reyes Berryessa in 1842. Included in the grant were many of New Almaden's quicksilver fields.
Symphony Showcase 1996 runs May 11 through June 9. Hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday, with extended hours on Thursday nights. Admission is $15, with proceeds benefiting the San Jose Symphony; group rates and after-hours parties are available. Visitors may park and ride a shuttle bus at the lot at Almaden Expressway and Camden Avenue. For more information, call 354-0773.
This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, May 8, 1996.
©1996 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.