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"View Slideshow\n\nThe narrow cobblestone streets, Baroque churches, and bougainvillea-draped colonial homes of San Miguel de Allende, in central Mexico, have long beckoned artistic souls from north of the border. The city's Escuela de Bellas Artes, founded in 1938, still attracts an international student body, and Americans\u2014 represented by a mix of designers, entrepreneurs, and other creative types, both working and retired\u2014now make up about 10 percent of San Miguel's population. For many, the mountain town casts an instantaneous spell. \"My sister came here to play in a bridge tournament,\" recounts Jeffry Weisman, who, with his personal and professional partner, Andrew Fisher, manages the San Francisco\u2013based interior design firm Fisher Weisman. (Their first book, Artful Decoration, was just released by the Monacelli Press.) \"When she came back she said, \u2018I know where you're going to move.' We went down for a vacation and ended up buying a house.\"\n\nLocated in the city's historic center (\"three doors down from the bullring,\" notes Weisman), the couple's home, like most in San Miguel, has a reserved public face\u2014a terra-cotta-color stucco wall punctuated by iron-grated windows\u2014that scarcely hints at the architectural riches inside. But unlike most residences in the area, which are U-shaped with a courtyard in the middle, theirs is laid out in an L. \"It was originally built as a tannery,\" Weisman explains. \"The houses with courtyards tend to be a bit dark and claustrophobic, but ours has views and light and gardens with three old jacarandas.\" For all that, the 18th-century property lacked a certain charm: The structure had been remodeled and added onto over the years, and had most recently served as a sales office for a hotel chain.\n\n\"Basically we wanted to warm it up and give it an authentic 18th-century feel,\" Fisher says. To that end, he and Weisman hired a crew of several dozen local workers to gut and reconstruct the place. In went hand-hewn pine beams as well as terra-cotta floor tiles that had been given a handsome patina with gasoline and tar. Fireplaces were finished with elaborately carved cantera-stone mantels, and new windows and French doors opened up the house to the terraced gardens. Along the way, the designers also added a bedroom and bath in the main house and built a guest casita in the rear garden.\n\nThe couple christened their home Casa Acanto, acanthus leaves being a design motif they used throughout. Fronted by tall wood-plank doors, the entry hall has a new cross-vaulted ceiling\u2014its stone cornices engraved with an acanthus pattern\u2014that soars above 17th-century stone pavers warmed by an antique Moroccan rug. On one side of the entry is the dining room, outfitted with a huge shell-encrusted light fixture designed by Fisher, an echo of his days as a prot\u00E9g\u00E9 of Tony Duquette. On the other side sits the kitchen, with a blue-and-white frieze and cabinets made of reclaimed pine. But the main attraction lies further ahead. Steel-and-glass doors open onto a terrace and a sala abierta, or outdoor living room, that looks like it dates from the conquistador era: The cozy spot is framed by stone arches and anchored by a fireplace with an Argentine grill where the couple roasts meats and vegetables for an apparently endless stream of guests.\n\nFor the interior spaces, Fisher and Weisman decided that a clean backdrop best served both the colonial-style architecture and their shared taste in furnishings, which Weisman neatly sums up as \"a blend of the classical and the whimsical.\" Deep reddish-brown tiles and beams, white walls, and a simple blue-and-white color scheme set off a spirited mingling of traditional, modern, and custom-made pieces. The living room is appointed with a pair of 1940s James Mont lamps, and daybeds and curtains embellished with ikat. In front of the sofa stand taborets the designers upholstered in an Indian silk-and-peacock-feather fabric and topped with disks of California-laurel wood. The room is enlivened by Fisher's artworks, including one of his monumental \"quilts\" made of painted coffee filters and a mixed-media piece assembled from fragments of tarp and gold leaf, the latter used to conceal a large television over the fireplace. \"We really live outside when we're here,\" he says. \"But this is our indoor hangout. We do yoga and have Spanish classes here.\"\n\nThe living room's wrought-iron balconies survey the lower gardens, where grackles and finches bathe in a massive freestanding fountain chiseled from a single piece of cantera and six bronze frogs spout water into the cobalt-tiled swimming pool. Overlooking the pool, the new guest casita has its own sala abierta, as well as a bedroom suite on each of its two floors and a roof terrace boasting glorious views of the tile domes and flamboyant sunsets of the storied town. \"The casita is very popular,\" Weisman says. \"We love to have company.\" As if on cue, the designer's phone chimes and he excuses himself to welcome another group of friends to Casa Acanto.\n\nClick here to view the slide show of the couple's chic getaway in Mexico."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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