Arizona Foothills Magazine

Shadow Play

WITH ARCHED WINDOWS, CEILINGS THAT STRETCH INTO GROIN VAULTS AND CHANDELIERS THAT CAST DANCING SHADOWS, DAVID AND MADELYN GARRISON’S NORTH SCOTTSDALE HOME HAS ALL THE THRILLING COMPONENTS OF A DESERT CASTLE.

Story by Elizabeth Exline / Photographed by Chris Loomis

For most Arizonans, the term “Old World” calls to mind rich hues, sweeping spaces and all the earthy grandeur of an Italian villa. For Tony Sutton, owner of the interior design firm Est Est, however, the phrase evokes something slightly different. To his thinking, Old World has some Spanish Colonial spice to it—European techniques filtered through indigenous cultures— and Arizona is a prime environment for its architectural expression. “The spectrum is wide open,” he says of the state, “because we’re a melting pot of people everywhere, and that’s the story of Arizona. It’s a melting pot and a collision of cultures.”

That theory informed Sutton’s treatment of this, his third home for the Garrisons. Here he was at last able to move away from the traditional Southwestern aesthetic they’d previously embraced, and into the arms of that alluringly nebulous Old World look.