KAY OTOOLE by Susanna Salk

“I buy for my clients what I want to keep forever,” says Houston dealer Kay O’Toole. “I am attracted to objects that possess a particular spirit, that are unique, that reflect the maker.” She began buying antiques as soon as she had her first home. “My friends and I would shop together and when we all had children, we simply took them with us!” After continuing her own decoration, O’Toole’s love of antiques continued to grow until eventually she had more than a house-full of treasures. When two friends approached her to join their shop in a wonderful 1920s building, it was a natural fit. “At the time we were a destination place,” she remembers. “There were no shops around us and it was hard.” Before she knew it, she was running the business solo. And then the entire building came up for sale. Instead of retracting, O’Toole used the opportunity to fully realize her dream: “I always wanted to have my own shop filled with European antiques: to have more special, older, more original, more beautiful things every shipment.” She searched Europe for inventory and educated herself along the way. “I research and study and I buy from passion and intuition,” she says. “The beauty of nature is my inspiration.” Inside the dramatic space she now calls her own romantic, pieces O’Toole loves like an Italian Venetian 18th century sofa with a painted frame (“Such a strong piece but also comfortable”) tall, hand-forged wrought iron sconces, “(Never seen anything like them!”) and a painted Louis XVl table with red legs (“Love how delicate its legs are”) mix with the sounds of French singers like Etienne Daho and Francoise Hardy. Above it all, wafts the scent of roses. “The shop really reflects my sensibility and personality,” says O’Toole. “It’s an homage to beautiful and simple objects, many spiritual.” With one dream realized, it wasn’t long before she envisioned fulfilling the other: to live behind her shop in the white limestone gravel courtyard overlooking a fern-filled garden. She sketched her house for 12 years “gathering courage” to eventually build a pied-a terre. “It’s a little house based on a New Orleans French Quarter home in the 1700s,” says O’Toole. “Today I finally live there, but not without the support of wonderful friends and clients.” The rare moment she doesn’t have customers, you can find O’Toole painting at her desk (“My father told me a long time ago to paint at work when things were quiet and it’s the best advice I ever took!” ) or arranging her favorite full bloom pink roses. No matter how hectic her life gets, O’Toole always finds time to stop and smell them.