Artists create art.
That's just what they do.
They do it because they can't not do it. It flows from them through any medium that happens to be around. In Tony Martin's youth, this took on many expressions, from woodworking to weaving.
No matter what he touched, the highest quality and authentic products were what he created.
Early iterations as an artist included weaving traditional serapes and horse blankets. His love of traditional forms and techniques mixed with his artistic craftsmanship brought success to the business, of course, but also the attention of the highest kind including an exhibit in the Textile Museum in Washington DC back in the 1970's.
In a particularly 'artist' fashion, the bespoke cabinet shop he was also running at the time started turning out wooden children's toys. "We've got wood, we've got tools, let's make something wonderful." That's what artists do.
Quickly, the cabinet shop turned into a full design/build home-crafting firm in Fredericksburg TX, a town with a rich historical architectural vernacular, owing to the 19th Century German immigrants. Tony's exploration of this genre sent him in search of the materials needed to build legitimate heritage homes. Thus he began building his network of material suppliers. He sourced beams from old abandoned barns and hand-quarried sandstone from old mills and grain silos north of town, even old quarries. Today our network of suppliers stretches across the country.
The rest, as they say, is history.
In our age of fast-changing fads and slapped-together buildings, the necessarily slow path of creating handcrafted one-of-a-kind homes that will last for generations appealed to many. Through word-of-mouth recommendations, people have come to us in search of something special. Most desire one of our homes because they've seen one.
Tony Martin homes can be found all over Texas and the southwest, but our reach has spread to the hillsides and mountaintops of the Rocky Mountains.
Heritage Carries On
After graduating college, Tony's son Ira returned to the business. Since then the two have worked side by side on every project, designing, overseeing construction, and finding the best craftsmen. According to Tony, Ira has even surpassed him in sourcing the increasingly rare historic stone and timber needed for our projects.
While just as committed to the traditional vernacular style, Ira has enjoyed filling out and exploring new ways of building impossible projects and developing our style in creative ways.
But of course, they couldn't do it alone. The quality and creativity of our work does not stop with Tony and Ira, it flows from each of our architects, designers, project managers, and craftsmen with whom we've long enjoyed working.