The Fall Show is coming and this is where you go first.
Hi y’all. As the show approaches, a bunch of folks have started asking me how to ‘do Round Top right.’ For those of you who’ve missed it, there’s a tab up at the top of The Crush List screen that says “About The Antiques Show” and that’ll take you to a page of what I consider to be very useful general advice and info and back roads tricks. But I think can do more to help you decide where to go and when. Each of my next several posts will highlight one of my favorite venues. I’ll pull together a bunch of representative images and tell you a little about why and when I like to shop each one. Hope it helps.
First up: The Fields
I keep telling everyone the Show starts September 18, but that’s a lie. A bunch of us will be out there early the week before that, around the 13-14th, to check out The Fields, which I consider to include North Gate, Bar W and even (I know, I know you’ll disagree) the Renck Hall area. My very first The Crush List post was on North Gate Field. I said it then and it’s still true: it all starts in The Fields. If you’re looking for multiples, for imports, for metal letters, or biergarten tables or carnival signs or bread boards or silverware or matching marble sinks or farm furniture or holiday decorations or thousands of BARGAINS, this is your place.
I think The Fields are best enjoyed during the early bird days. You can always come back later in the show when everything is completely set up and the frozen lemonade booth is going and the free parking is a treat. But try go early when the dealers are selling to other dealers and things are just beginning to come together like a chick just pecking its way out of the egg. You’ll have to use the porta potties. And you’ll need to pack some Kind Bars and almonds and apples and waters because food vendors are not really out yet. It’ll be hot and a little lonely, but enjoy. You’re shopping the Show like a local.
For the third post in a row, we’re driving up and over the bluff behind LaGrange to the town of Schulenburg. Our two previous visits have taken us to church and on a lovely history hike and I know you’re too polite to say it out loud, but you’re definitely thinking, “This has been such a great field trip but for heaven’s sake I’m absolutely famished. Could we maybe stop and get some lunch somewhere?”
So glad you asked. The Garden Co. Marketplace and Cafe is one of those oozy charmy spots that would be everyone’s favorite in any quaint town. Or big city for that matter. The decor is spot on country chic, mixing industrial with mid-century with vintage ruralist with cottage with repurposed. Servers are welcoming and enthusiastic, the food is just exactly what you hoped it would be and the store & nursery are hard to get out of without a purchase or two. A pepper plant and gauzy tunic top last time if you must know.
Of course you want to hear more about the food, so I’ll be happy to share descriptions from the lunch menu as you take your photo tour of the dining spaces and places. Don’t miss the farm tool chandelier in this very first photo…
Pesto marinated grilled portobello mushrooms topped with goat cheese and pecans served with field greens and balsamic drizzle.
Crisp boston leaf lettuce and and mixed greens topped with chimichurri marinated grilled hanger steak, hardwood smoked bacon, red onions, tomatoes and crumbled blue cheese with a honey balsamic vinaigrette.
Grilled sourdough bread with sharp cheddar, swiss, gruyére and bleu cheese served with side servings of dijon mustard and a fruit chutney.
Buttery toasted brioche bread with thick bacon, lettuce & tomato with roasted garlic aioli.
Here’s why the chill little seating area in the back is so great: Let’s say you and your friends have driven from wherever over to Schulenburg to meet for a nice dinner of seared duck breast and brussel sprouts. You’ve finished your meal and everyone’s thinking it’s probably time to get up from the table but you kind of want to spend a bit more time together since you’ve come all this way. It’s late, and it’s not Houston or anything, so there aren’t too many other spots in town to move to for a nightcap or dessert. Well how great, your group can go back to the comfy lounge area and hang out for a while. And how convenient that you’ll pass the wine bar on the way there!
Want to shop in the Marketplace & Nursery real quick before we head home? I thought you might!
P.S. If your field trip this time is to Round Top not Schulenburg, there’s also a Garden Co. Marketplace shop right across Henkel Square from Pie Haven.
“They blended religion and art and science because, at base, science is no more than an investigation of a miracle we can never explain, and art is an interpretation of that miracle.”
If ever a picture was worth thousands of my words, it’s now.
And really, isn’t what we all need most just a quiet moment of sanctuary?
So here are my photos from St. Mary Catholic Church in High Hill, aka the Queen of the Painted Churches, and I’ll leave the explaining to what’s already been said.
I never quite understood what this Monument Hill Kreische Brewery place was. A Monument. A Hill. A Brewery? I did know enough to know that it’s not a working beer-making facility serving fresh frosty ale and Buffalo wings, so what can I say, it kind of slipped down the list of sights to see. Plus it’s a hard place to say.
Turns out the name is pronounced CRY-shee. And the whole thing is fantastic. Great story, great old structures, great welcome center and stone visitors shed and mural and Art Deco tower and view and picnic tables and holiday trail of lights and annual Texas Heroes celebration with cannons and re-enactors and crafts. You can even get married here. And you should! One thing though, you can’t bring beer.
To make things easy, let’s divide the story of Monument Hill Kreische Brewery into four parts.
First, the Black Beans.
Around 1840, as Texas was fighting for its independence, a couple hundred Texas soldiers decided to go down to Mexico to avenge the Dawson Massacre that had taken place over near San Antonio. Things didn’t go well and they were captured. But for various political reasons, Mexican General Santa Anna agreed to send the soldiers back to Texas. With one small catch. Santa Anna was only willing to free 90% of them; the rest would be executed on the spot. So in an exercise just one step above rock/paper/scissors or a Project Runway unconventional materials challenge, each soldier drew a bean from a pot. Lucky white bean, you got to live and go home. Black bean, no. Apparently the event was all very civilized. The doomed black bean soldiers dutifully lined up against the wall and were shot dead so that their brothers could go free.
Part Two of the story is where La Grange comes into the picture. About five years after the lottery incident, folks wanted to honor both the Dawson Massacre victims and the heroic Black Bean soldiers. Remains were collected and since the only officer among the dead was from La Grange, a gorgeous bluff above town was chosen as the final burial site for all.
Part Three is the beer part. Heinrich Kreische was a German immigrant and master stonemason. He bought the land on the bluff, tomb and all, in 1849 and proceeded to build Texas’ first commercial brewery down near a live spring. Bluff Beer was a hit and the locals enjoyed many a lawn kegger at the estate until Mr. Kreische literally fell off his wagon in 1882.
The final, most recent part of the story is that a magnificent full-on Art Deco tower and new granite vault were added to the tomb in the 1930’s, and the whole kit and caboodle from vault to brewery ruins gradually became a State Historic Site and then a park. Frisch Auf!
Regular readers know how hard I’ve crushed on one of the Antique Show’s most illustrious fields, EX-CESS and many of its individual vendors. And if you’ve ever visited Round Top with me you know how irresistible I find Lizzie Lou, that wondrous shop of wonders next door to Royers Cafe in downtown Round Top.
Hurray hurray then that last spring both EX-CESS and Lizzie had babies or cloned themselves or replicated or expanded or however you want to think about it. More to love!
EX-CESS TWO sprang up across the highway from EX-CESS SENIOR just before the 2015 Spring show. Not every booth was filled (it’s quite a lot of real estate), but the swanky new covered pads featured several enthusiastic new vendors, a few relocated favorites and what seemed to be a bunch of secondary/satellite/staging spaces for some of the Show’s bigger vendors from elsewhere. Overall it was great digging.
Lizzie Lou Two or Two or II or Junior set up shop at the new EX-CESS in an all-star front line space. You don’t need words from me to appreciate Mary Lou’s incredible fantasyland. Just scrolllllllll.
That turquoise jacket and sombrero made me think about housepaint colors in Mexico. They’re so much more alive and vivid, not at all like the Barbie-doll-skin colors we seem to want to paint our stucco. Here’s how The Gringos Guide to Using Mexican Paint: Part 3 explains it:
Paints made in Mexico have higher pigment concentrations to combat the climatic conditions. And being so close to the equator, with much stronger sun rays than northern latitudes, the country’s thick, rich paints look fantastic in intense sunlight. Look at a color strip. Say that you absolutely love the second from the top; it would be perfect in Canada but would look weak and dirty here in the tropical light.
No offense Canada.
FYI (for those who may not be as hip as you undoubtably are): West Broadway is its own street and cuts through all the chic parts of lower Manhattan; Soho, TriBeCa, Washington Square, Greenwich Village, etc. It is “not to be confused with Broadway.“
The good news? You've discovered The Crush List. The not so good? I haven't been actively posting here for a few years now, which means the never terribly reliable details about my crushes are even more unreliable. Antique vendors have switched venues, shops in town have moved or passed on, donkeys may or may not be in the same front yards... In spite of the risks of massive misdirection I've left the site up in hopes that it still achieves its goal - to inspire you to visit Round Top for the Antiques Show or any time you have the time.
With that said, I leave you to explore this random list of my very favorite things about my very favorite place. I’ve tried to capture the area’s special pieces and parts. Some are big deal, some are small gestures, some are legendary and some are just tiny pip and squeak.
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