Feature Home: Where Boulder Meets Bangalore
26 Sep 2017
This soulful landscape and home resonate with world stories and a life well lived
By Lisa Marshall | photos by www.weinrauchphotography.com It all started with a dusty wrought-iron chandelier hanging from a market stall in Bangalore, India. Boli Medappa, then a precocious 16-year-old from the rural district of Coorg, spotted it and, as she remembers it, “found it pleasing to the eye.”
Collecting Memories
Medappa landed in Colorado in 1981 to get a master’s degree at the University of Denver, but quickly fell in love with Boulder’s forward thinking and wide-open spaces. They reminded her of the lush coffee-plantation region where she was born, and her grandparents’ home, where she spent much of her youth. “I always said I would live in Boulder one day,” she recalls. Instead, her career as a global telecom consultant took her to England, South Africa and all across Asia. In her free time, she traveled to exotic locales, gathering memories—from valuable antiques and rare artworks to gifts treasured purely for their sentiment. “You are either a collector, who buys things because they please you, or an investor, who buys things because you think they will appreciate someday,” she says. “I have always been a collector.” On one wall hang a monk’s horn, a woven hat worn in the rice fields and a 300-year-old tapestry from a trip to Bhutan in 1992. On another, a grass-cutting sword, emblazoned with a snake’s head, from Cambodia. In the dining room sits a collection of antique aquatint prints of Indian landscapes by William and Thomas Daniell from the early 1800s, photographs of 1850s-era India taken by British photographer Samuel Bourne, and an assortment of shiny Indian tiffin boxes. Much of Medappa’s collection sat in storage for years as she lived and worked in London and searched for just the right home in Colorado. She insisted on three things: a view of the Flatirons, a corner lot, and a single-level house on the west side of town. By the time she found the place in 2002, she had amassed decades’ worth of treasures. But she did not, as many in Boulder have done, pop the top. “I don’t believe in big houses,” she says, noting that she only needed enough room for herself, her mate Will Schaleben, and their beloved black Lab, Zara. Instead, she made subtle adjustments with big impacts.
Front & Center
Her brother, Prem Chengappa, a noted landscape architect, came from India to help her infuse the front yard—previously a bit of an afterthought—with grace. “I never understood the American tradition of emphasizing the backyard,” she says, noting that in Indian traditions, a well-thought-out entrance is key to imbuing a home with good energy. “I wanted my front entrance to be as welcoming as possible.” And it is.