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"I threw out all the traditional furniture years ago...It looked like a status symbol"

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A collector since age 16, when she received a Gauguin etching, Harithas has amassed a dazzling mini-museum of con-temporary works, multimedia masterpieces that often take up the space occupies in other people's houses by furniture. Alongside them, outstanding examples of Modern, American Indian, Texas and Chicano art balance more specialized collections of antique toy soldiers, kachina dolls, antique pencil sharpeners, perfume bottles and vintage costumes. "If it's not art," she says, "it doesn't have an importance to me."

Her rather unprepossessing traditional in Armand Place is a strangely rambling structure. Says Herithas, "I've always loved the fact that the outside is so plain. It's that wonderful theory of being really ramshackle outside and full of Louis XV inside. Well, this isn't quite that, but it's a funny maze-like thing because it's been added onto so many times. When Jim and I got married, we suddenly had all these additional children, so we had to improvise. We didn't have much furniture at first because we had all these cats that weren't housebroken and seven children between us who were throwing dances in our living room all the time."

Even a cursory glance at the living room-with its Larry Fuente gem-encrusted water closet at front and center and Jesse Lott's papier-mâché creature in a holding pattern overhead-offers proof positive that Harithas is no ordinary collector. The very nature of the works dubs her an eccentric, and the defiant strength of her few furnishings-vintage horn strength of her few furnishings-vintage horn settees upholstered in old-world tapestry, for example, or a mammoth bed with testers made of unretouched carpet tubes-leaves little doubt she's also a rebel with a riotous sense of humor.

"I've never bought the idea that you had to have plain vanilla walls to show art the right way," she says. "I think that whether you have a lot or a little, your furniture needs to speak as loudly as the art because it is art. I threw out all the traditional furniture years ago, except for the really nice pieces. I just couldn't stand it. It looked like a status symbol; it made me feel very lower middle class. I like a sort of junky look, like Matamoros," she explains. Designer Warren Thompson devoted 10 years to helping Harithas put together the look she was after. "Poor thing," she says. "He was the only decorator in Houston who could put up with my crazy moods."

In the master bedroom, antique horn furniture is defiantly upholstered in Brunschwig & Fils tapestry, while a magic-carpet bed-its testers are of carpet tubing-is covered with a tongue-in-cheek spread hand embroidered in San Miguel de Allende with the logo of America's legal tender.