Not that you’d guess it at this moment — and not that he’d agree — but the guy under the cool round table is a retail rock star. Dressed in black boots, jeans, and a smart blue-on-blue houndstooth jacket, Paul Michael is crouched down in a showroom at the Dallas Market explaining where he found and how he fashioned every part of his own take on a 19th-century parlor table, down to the pedestal’s lion’s paw feet, which he had reproduced based on an antique from Poland.
Watching and listening, you get the fascinated impression that no bridge is too far in finding, creating, curating, buying, and selling for this self-admitted black sheep whose rebellious early life didn’t necessarily indicate he’d become a business success and influential tastemaker. But he’s both. His four thriving stores — the flagship in Canton, Texas; his base of operation and creation in his hometown of Lake Village, Arkansas; one in River Ranch in Lafayette, Louisiana; and another in Monroe, Louisiana — showcase home décor items whose quality and affordability put the good and beautiful life within reach for a growing fan base.
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There’s evidence everywhere of Michael’s impeccable taste and unerring eye. The smooth-as-silk sycamore slab banquet table with the Lucite panel legs. The soft hair-on-hides speckled with elegant gold foil spots. The brass Sputnik pendant lamps bursting with polished quartz slices. The glass cube occasional tables that open for display items. The oversize château cabinet with distinctive antique iron hardware. The big rusty receptacle made from an ornate wrought-iron fence. The impactful art — from Picasso-like paintings to African graphics — on every wall.
You can turn over tags to see prices for all these things, but what’s actually on offer here is a ticket to enjoying life. It’s all about Paul Michael’s personal touch.
One of the best places to experience his personal philosophy writ large is the new Market Hill by Paul Michael in the twice-yearly antiques Mecca of Round Top, Texas. There Michael has gathered his own wares and 19 of his favorite vendors in an architecturally significant building of his own design — a destination unto itself of indoor air-conditioned shops and outdoor covered breezeways, beaucoup parking, loading and unloading zones, and an on-site restaurant that serves up a nice glass of wine and a darn decent lunch and evening meal to cap off a day of hardcore treasure hunting. It’s 130,000 square feet of the look and feel of living life to the fullest, filled with the best quality affordable antiques and decorative arts a hard-earned buck can buy.
It’s probably his best — and certainly his biggest — example of a preternatural gift for sizing up a situation and getting creative with it. “We were going to Round Top to buy antiques for our stores,” Michael recalls. “I could see what was going on there, and it rang a little bell. There was a super-high-quality clientele buying and spending lots of money, but the facilities and accommodations weren’t up to it.”
Part of the charm of Round Top might have been the heat and the dust and the we’re-all-in-this-together-waiting-for-a-port-a-potty, but Michael saw an opportunity to elevate the experience. And the timing was right: “We had a rice farm in Arkansas that we’d paid off. We decided to sell it and take the money and build a first-class place in Round Top to showcase the things we’re making and selling.”
The we Michael’s referring to is his wife and “50-50 partner” in all things, Debbie. Sitting next to him in a casual chic black shift and white Angora wrap, she nods along with her husband’s recollection of how their latest entrepreneurial leap of faith came to be. “We sort of stumbled into it all,” she says. “There’s not a part of our married life that’s been planned. We’re good at reacting to things. We evolved into this, and we just never tire of the excitement and fun of doing it.”
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Paul and Debbie Michael are heart-and-soul people, and, not surprisingly, Market Hill by Paul Michael is a heart-and-soul project — a full-circle culmination of their relationship and shared career that not coincidentally began in dusty flea markets.
“He found me in a flea market in Nashville,” Debbie says. At the time, she had a shop in Music City on Elliston Place near Exit/In, where she was “buying and selling antique quilts and was the first to sell antique clothing.” Her vintage pieces were finding their way to concert stages and album covers. He was busy buying and selling on the Nashville-Memphis-Canton flea market circuit. “He’d be my late date,” Debbie
remembers. “He’d say, ‘I’ll be there at midnight. Wait for me.’ ” She did, and they’ve been together picking, creating, raising a family, and building the business ever since.
It wasn’t always clear that Michael would find his way, especially during his deep-inhale hippie days in the 1970s. But when the smoke finally cleared, he embraced his buying-and-selling birthright. “I grew up in a family department store,” says Michael, the only boy in a family of four sisters whose influence he credits with honing his instincts for décor. “I had an aunt who was a supreme merchant. But all the while I felt the call of the wild and had to try it all.”
He got a first inkling of his calling when he started hanging out with a “dyed-in-the-wool Texas girl. We’d go to the horse races in Hot Springs [Arkansas], and on Sundays we’d go out into the countryside looking for antiques in old country stores and general stores. After racing season, she said, ‘Let’s go to Canton.’ ”
He’d never been to the Texas trading town before — it would prove a revelation. “We packed all that stuff we’d been buying during racing season. I knew what she’d paid for it, and I saw what she was making. I thought,
Source: https://www.cowboysindians.com/2017/09/the-paul-michael-company/