Home & Design
The Dallas Morning News
1992
By Mariana Green

Toy designer Phebe Phillips takes just the opposite approach in achieving a warm bedroom haven with her use of strong color. And her room also has storybook overtones. The 32-year-old creator of Phebe's Bears and a line of stuffed bunnies, cats, dogs and frogs regards home as "a place that is safe. Nothing unpleasant happens here, no stress, nothing to worry about."

Her small Highland Park apartment is decorated with warm colors, wood tones and collections of animal images, such as 1940s souvenir rugs depicting mischievous cats and rare majolica bowls imprinted with regal dogs. Miss Phillips' affection for animals turned a spare-time sideline into a full-fledged company with accounts nationwide.

Not only does she design and manufacture stuffed animals, each with a hand-sewn face and its own personality profile, but she is adding accent pillows and hand-painted fabrics to her inventory. For Fitz & Floyd, the Dallas-based table-top manufacturer, Miss Phillips is designing children's tableware based on her animals.

The whimsical stuffed animals, which Miss Phillips finds "very, very comforting," are joined in her apartment by three live gray cats, Simon, Sebastian and Sophie-Willow. They have the run of the house, including the closets and cupboards. Her bed, custom-made of willow by Alvin Kitchens of Texarkana, was designed with the cats in mind. Overscaled and high off the ground, it is topped by a lattice of woven willow that often is draped with the ferret-like body of Sophie-Willow.

"It was like giving them a tree inside the house," says Miss Phillips. "It's more of a kitty jungle gym than a bed. They hang out here and listen to classical music all day and roll in the sunspots on the floor."

Felines aside, Miss Phillips, who often works at home, finds the warmth of the woods soothing. She has furnished the rest of the room with antiques in the golden tones of pine and fruitwood and painted the walls "Robin Hood green."

"I travel so much on business, I don't like to go away on vacations. A bedroom is a psychological investment," she says. "It's almost like a sanctuary. I want things that are very, very warm and pleasing."