The Perfect Home away from Home
Destination Wine Country
Summer Edition
Maureen Foley
Barbara Butler’s Imaginative tree houses, like the Tree Top Inn (Above), aim to make the world a less serious place.
”The world is so serious,” says Barbara Butler, whose tree house designs are anything but serious. An Artist turned tree house builder,
Butler
specializes in colorful structures with delightful details and imaginative surprises built for kids only. Secret escape doors, pulley buckets, speaking tubes (copper pipes that project a child’s whisper up to 300 feet away), and furniture that folds up into the walls to make room for rowdy fun and sleepovers are just a few of the kid-friendly amenities that she includes in her designs.
Butler, who grew up playing on a swing that hung from a giant maple tree in
Watertown, New York
, says that she enjoys recreating the joy of the wild, uproarious youth through her designs. “I want to inspire that same feeling of freedom and playfulness in children,” she says. “That unstructured ‘be home by dark’ sort of creative fun is so important.”
Butler
considers all of her projects a collaborative effort between designer and nature. “The branches tell me how to create a structure that enhances the grace of a tree.” Two of her fantastic creations, the Tree Top Inn and
Fort
Santa Barbara
, perch in
Santa Barbara
area trees. Both feature her trademark playful colors and beautiful hand-carved elements.
For Media & Publicity Inquiries, or to arrange an interview, please contact:
Jeanette Brown
Sarah Hall Productions, Inc.
670 Broadway - Suite 504
New York, NY 10012
Email: jeanette@shpny.com
Phone:(212) 529-1598
Fax:(212) 529-3171
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