After living for decades in a grand house in Suffolk, Virginia, overlooking a 27-acre lake, Diane Grieder and Marion Grigg retired to Charlottesville and a whole new landscape. They were glad to downsize to a smaller home, Grieder says, but “it was hard to give up that lake view.” Two years ago, when they found […]
After living for decades in a grand house in Suffolk, Virginia, overlooking a 27-acre lake, Diane Grieder and Marion Grigg retired to Charlottesville and a whole new landscape. They were glad to downsize to a smaller home, Grieder says, but “it was hard to give up that lake view.” Two years ago, when they found […]
Centuries before Google Earth and Google Maps, taking the measure of a piece of property was grueling work. A surveyor produced rudimentary descriptions, such as: “Beginning at the white oak, head true north 30 degrees, then east 500 poles to a red oak, then south to the muddy creek.” Lovingston cartographer Mike Crabill, 75, relied […]
For the interior redesign of a large house in a leafy Charlottesville neighborhood, architect Bethany Puopolo reassigned many of its spaces—a family room became the master suite, and the living and dining rooms switched places—in order to make them work better for her clients, a couple with three young children. But the father, the family’s […]
The style of central Virginia’s wine-tasting rooms generally reflects their rural, agrarian roots. Some have a rustic, barn-like feel, because vineyards are essentially farms. Others exude the refinement and grandeur of a country estate, where one might relax with a glass of viognier after a morning on horseback. There are exceptions. Gabriele Rausse Winery built […]
The fundamental nature of art,” says Tate Pray, “is that it has no use.” But the Charlottesville-based designer seems bent on proving that maxim wrong, crafting wooden furniture that’s both functional and reflective of his playful sense of humor. Pray seems to thrive on contradictions. He uses traditional woodworking techniques to give his stylish Modernist […]
The address of the wedge-shaped building is 550 E. Water St., but it is better known simply as 550. That’s what happens when a piece of architecture breaks new ground. It becomes a symbol, and a shorthand reference is enough to identify it. Designed by Cecilia Hernandez Nichols and her husband, Robert Nichols—founders and principals […]
This can’t be real. That’s the thought that popped into my head when I saw Wade’s Mill. The rustic wood-and-stone structure, with its big water wheel and dark raised- seam roof, basked in the soft sunlight of a late-fall day. As I approached, car windows wide open, I felt as if I were moving toward […]
“I started painting moths eight years ago. Each of the first few took months to complete, but now I can paint one a week. I’ve done 110, including several of the same species; I expect that number to rise steadily, since I paint every day. “At night, on the side of the shed on my […]
In a part of the Shenandoah Valley where history is prized especially deeply, just outside the village of Brownsburg, a relocated log cabin called Briar Hill is full of a special sense of the past. It embodies its own history dating back to the turn of the 18th century, when it was originally built on […]
The house, dating all the way back to 1742, didn’t need much work. But the five-acre property surrounding it did. When Sarah Van Steenburg bought a historic house near Barboursville in 2015, she appreciated the renovation work already completed on the structure, and she was attracted to what she calls the “money shot”—the view from […]