Meet an eclectic designer from the Texas Hill Country, a South Dakota-based cowboy architect, and the cutting horse champion who is revamping the family furniture business.
Every year, C&I produces a comprehensive list of the best the American West has to offer: homegrown food, Indigenous art, iconic styles, family traditions, contemporary design—you name it. This year, we focused solely on the people and have rounded up the innovators, influencers, and fascinating figures who make up the many faces of the modern West. Here, the design gurus we found sparking interest in the world of home interiors and architectural design.
Sheila Youngblood
Making a home for visitors in the eclectic West
Owner and designer, Rancho Pillow | Austin and Round Top, Texas
Bold colors. Bohemian vibes. Wide-open spaces. European mounts and rocking chairs and turquoise you-name-it. The world of Sheila Youngblood rotates around a Western core. The eclectic designer outfitted her own interiors in a spirited, gypsylike style before literally opening one of her homes to the public to enjoy.
Located in Round Top, Texas, Rancho Pillow is the name of the once family-only Youngblood compound, which includes an outdoor bathhouse, saltwater wading pool, poetry library, and a host of vibrant lodging quarters. Perfect for accommodating getaways, parties, girls’ weekends, and antiquing trips to Marburger Farm and Round Top Antiques Fair, these 20 acres in Central Texas showcase a singular style that combines unbridled colors with the unique whimsy of Youngblood’s heart: folk art from Latin American countries, textiles and curiosities from artisans of the world, vintage treasures, and flea market finds from the fields. It’s one creative woman’s distinctive twist on a style that has informed the current look of Western interiors. Not since the antler chandelier or the leather sofa has the West tendered a more popular design aesthetic, and Youngblood helped define it.
— Emily C. Laskowski
Click the image above to view the slideshow.
Thomas Hurlbert
Designing for rural communities
Architect, co-founder, CO-OP Architecture | Aberdeen, Rapid City, and Sioux Falls, South Dakota
The head dog at CO-OP Architecture is not cofounder and principal Thomas Hurlbert. Upstaging the 2018 AIA Young Architect Award winner and calling the shots is Wild Bill Hickok, Hurlbert’s long-haired wiener dog. “In his younger days he was a grand champion at the local German fest wiener dog races,” Hurlbert says. “He’s parlayed that victory into becoming our office PR man, but he’s been underperforming as an employee for a while. He generally lies around, but he barks every day at the FedEx guy. Not sure why. The FedEx guy is a great guy.”
Don’t let Hurlbert’s sense of fun fool you. He’s serious about reviving rural America with good design, and doing it in a spirit of cooperation. While his passions run to his family (Wild Bill, wife, and young son, Landy); old trucks (the 1969 F-250 he just sold); Dwight Yoakam (“my king”); and his radio show, Rock Garden Tour (“a weird South Dakota version of A Prairie Home Companion”), he’s also dedicated to doing his part to make sure rural America has good architecture.
“We’ve undervalued design at times around here, and we want to help bring that value back,” he says. “We think there are cultural benefits, sure, but also economic benefits. Better design influences the quality of our lives, in enjoyment but even more so in performance.
“We believe in the values of collaboration and cooperation between friends, neighbors, farmers, and cities. We love the rural lifestyle and landscape, and we want to emulate that feeling with our clients and our consultants.”
Two examples: the K.O. Lee Aberdeen Public Library, which has become the town’s living room, and the historic Minneapolis & St. Louis Railroad Depot, which Hurlbert bought, renovated, and saved from the wrecking ball. He co-founded the Downtown Aberdeen Revitalization Team (aka DART) with other community-minded folks. “We were tired of empty and dilapidated downtown buildings, so we formed an LLC, recruited 19 members, and raised a little cash. ... So far we’ve purchased three buildings and flipped them. It’s definitely not a moneymaker, but it might help save downtown and improve property values.”
That’s the spirit of CO-OP. But that’s Hurlbert wearing his professional hat. Here’s the “aspiring cowboy” wearing his cowboy hat: “I was talked out of naming our firm the James River Gang — after a nearby river — because our first clients were some nuns and there was concern that we might come off as a bunch of misfit outlaw bandits. Which we are.”
— Dana Joseph
Elizabeth Brumbaugh Quirk
Making moves in the saddle and the home biz
Vice President of Brumbaugh’s Fine Home Furnishings; 2018 Non Pro World Cutting Horse Champion, 2018 No. 1 Non Pro Equistat Rider of the Year | Fort Worth, Texas
Her father opened the family’s furnishings store in 1966, and Brumbaugh’s Fine Home Furnishings has been an outpost of décor and design in Fort Worth for more than 50 years. First daughter Elizabeth Brumbaugh Quirk believes there’s nothing typical about it, which is why the business continues to succeed amid a constantly changing retail landscape.
A stylish balance between traditional and contemporary is exemplified by the Elizabeth Collection she introduced there in 2014. Although Brumbaugh’s offers Western aficionados a reliable, steady stock of stylish furnishings and home accents, it’s pieces like her Teal Tibetan Occasional Chair that pepper the classics with trendy twists and downright swank.
Perhaps 30-year-old Brumbaugh Quirk benefits from having one foot in the millennial generation (in college, just when social media was emerging, she helped with the company’s online presence) and the other in the stirrups (she’s a decorated horsewoman who has been riding in national cutting-horse competitions for more than 15 years). The result? A perfect blend of the old West with the new that fits right inside our homes.
— Emily C. Laskowski
Click the image above to view the slideshow.
Photography: (cover image) Greg Giannukos/Courtesy Rancho Pillow, (Rancho Pillow images) Knoxy Knox/Courtesy Rancho Pillow, Courtesy Thomas Hurlbert, Jeremy Enlow/Courtesy Elizabeth Brumbaugh Quirk, (slideshow 2) Courtesy Elizabeth Brumbaugh Quirk
From the May/June 2019 issue.