Mary Emmerling keeps everyday
items at hand, displaying fruit
on ironstone platters and in
baskets.

Rules of Order

Mary Emmerling first fell in love with Santa Fe in the early 1980s, when she traveled there to research her first book on American country decorating. Having lived on the East Coast, she was drawn to the mountains, the soil, the adobe, and the otherworldly sun that casts an unmatched glow over it all. "My grandparents were from Wyoming," she says, "so the West is in my blood." When a two-room adobe house came up for sale, Mary made a mental note of it. Years later, she contacted a real estate agent. "If that little house is ever for sale," she said, "let me know." The answer? "It's on the market right now." The space measures just 850 square feet, with a living area, kitchen, bath, and bedroom. But thanks to Mary's conviction about keeping everything organized and using items that serve double-duty, the small space is immensely livable. It also conveys the lively Southwestern lifestyle she loves. "It's always an adventure here," Mary says. "We can do something different every day: hiking, fishing up in the mountains, going to a dance or fiesta. It's all about having fun and celebrating."

 

The simple background of adobe
offers visual space for an
extensive collection of artifacts.

That lightness of spirit is reflected in Mary's home, inside and out. At 7,000 feet, Santa Fe sits in the high desert, a surprisingly ideal climate for roses and hollyhocks. Mary has started a lavender garden on the side, near a picket fence that's as pristine as the adobe is sun-baked. That fence, she says, stands as a symbol of the marriage of country and Southwestern style. Inside the house, she has blended the two with her signature style, bringing baskets and wooden furnishings from the East and accessorizing them with everything from Navajo blankets to turquoise jewelry. "It all mixes so easily," she says.

That effortless blend is a hallmark of the new personal country style, which combines furnishings and accessories from different cultures, regions, and periods of history. "It's all about being influenced by where you are," Mary says. "Surround yourself with things that have meaning for you, no matter where they come from." In this Santa Fe house, ironstone platters and New England baskets share space with Peruvian silver and Southwestern landscape paintings. "Even the cowboy clothes are easy to mix in," Mary says. "They fit with the collecting I've done my whole life."