Amalie Adler Ascher hails from a family of collectors.
Still, this fact does not prepare a guest for a visit to her home. Beyond the front door of her two-bedroom apartment in Towson's retirement community of Edenwald are bright splashes of fabric color, the high-polish gleam of antique furniture and walls peppered with tapestries, paintings and porcelain.
"The residents who see [my place] call this the Edenwald Museum," says Ascher, 78, and a former gardening columnist for The Sun.
Yet, this "museum" is actually a downsized version of her former life.
In December 2001, she and her then-ailing husband, Baltimore psychiatrist and professor, Eduard Ascher, moved to Edenwald. (Her husband died shortly after the move.) Amalie Ascher recalled that, while this lifestyle change was the right thing to do, it was difficult deciding what objects to keep - and what to give away - from their Guilford home.
The couple paid $226,000 (excluding monthly care fees) for their unit in the high-rise building. She estimated an additional $30,000 was spent on the structural details, as well as upgrading all of her kitchen appliances, and all of the light fixtures in the house "to suit my taste."
"I gutted the whole place when I came in," Ascher remembers of the renovation that would combine two, one-bedroom units into the new 1,268- square-foot apartment.
Ascher's taste first appears wildly eclectic, but a closer inspection reveals a commonality of period, mostly 19th century, with French, Asian and English influences.
A six-panel wooden screen picked up in Hong Kong defines the living and dining areas, which make up the west wing.
The screen's soft background colors and intricately carved birds and flowers set the tone for a delicate collectibles such as a glass-fronted shadowbox hanging on the west wall of the living room. Lined in the back with cut velvet fabric, the box displays a variety of cut steel shoe buckles that belonged to Ascher's grandmother.
Across the room, an antique English breakfront crafted of mahogany and inlaid with burled wood houses a collection of detailed figurines.
Other fine period furniture in the room includes a carved-oak English refractory table circa 1840, which rests in front of the living room window, and two carved satinwood chests with marble tops.
"I love being surrounded by beautiful things," says Ascher, who graduated from Goucher College with a degree in fine arts.
