As she embarks on her third decade in business, interior designer Lisa E. Erdmann follows an every-other-year schedule to decide when she will decorate a room in the American Red Cross Designers Show House, an annual fundraiser that benefits the charitys Palm Beach Treasure Coast chapter. On alternate years, she focuses on a different organization, from creating a table setting for a benefit at the Norton Museum to helping the Center for Family Services renovate its West Palm Beach offices.

But this year, shes returning her time and design talents to the 39th annual Red Cross Show House at a historic lakefront home in Lake Worth, which hosts a preview party Wednesday before opening to the public the next day for a month of tours.

My parents raised me to always know it was our responsibility to give back if we had the means to do so, Erdmann says. So picking a charity is important in my makeup, and working with the Red Cross is a pleasure. Its so well received that it helps expose our design talent, and it benefits them, too.

Land-development ties

Giving back is not the only way of thinking Erdmann learned from her family.

Her livelihood centers around homes and design, and she comes from a land-development family with a name certainly familiar to Palm Beachers. Her grandfather, E. Llwyd Ecclestone Sr. an early proponent of building luxury homes clustered around golf courses developed the South Florida luxury communities Lost Tree Village and Johns Island. Her father, Palm Beacher E. Llwyd Ecclestone, developed PGA National and Old Port Cove. Her brother, E. Llwyd Ecclestone III, meanwhile, has just finished work on a pair of houses he developed on speculation on the North End.

Erdmann graduated from Middlebury College in Vermont and attended Parsons School of Design while working in the design industry in New York City. Having also studied at Florida Institute of Technology, she founded Lisa Erdmann & Associates in 1994. Its based at her familys development offices in West Palm Beach but has also long maintained a Palm Beach address.

For this years show house, Erdmann is cooking up something special for the living room of the 1925 Mediterranean-style house known locally as the Birthday Cake Castle, although its formal name is La Florentia.

The 7,000 square foot house, recently bought by Scott Levine, was originally built by Sherman Childs. It received its Birthday Cake Castle nickname when former owner Upton Close gave the home to his wife, Margaret Fretter Nye, as a birthday present in 1954. With slender candle-like pillars, plaster swirls that resemble icing and graceful curves, it even has a birthday-cake stained-glass window in the stairwell.

Its grandly scaled rooms, casual spaces, and nooks and crannies of various shapes and sizes will be the basic ingredients for 20 designers, who will adorn them to create their own slices of decorating magic.

Link:
Stylish return: Erdmann among decorating veterans at American Red Cross Designers Show House

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February 27, 2015 at 8:51 am by Mr HomeBuilder
Category: Interior Decorator