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"View Slideshow\n\nA profound love of the land, mixed with a lifelong passion for  home entertaining, is the driving force behind the imposing collection of five log structures that Kreis and Sandy Beall have built on a picturesque 32-acre site in Tennessee&amp;#39;s Great Smoky Mountains. With southern understatement, the Bealls and their Atlanta-based interior designer, Suzanne Kasler, refer to the compound&amp;#39;s 12,000 square feet of buildings, including the princely main house, as &amp;quot;log cabins,&amp;quot; much in the way that southerners might self-deprecatingly refer to the majestic two-story columns of their plantation houses as &amp;quot;sticks.&amp;quot;\n\nThe logs in question are more than amply proportioned antique timbers collected, as Kreis Beall explains, &amp;quot;by a man in Knoxville, Tennessee, with a passion for finding and gathering timbers from old log barns.&amp;quot; If they form a robust and richly textured background for the Bealls&amp;#39; vast collections of 18th- and early-19th-century European furnishings and household ornaments, as they do, they also adamantly refuse to remain in the background. Joined by rugged boulder chimney breasts, the logs set the tone for the interiors&amp;#39; unshakable and comforting stability.\n\nThe idea for this cheerfully self-assured and charmingly nonconformist dwelling was recycled from one of the Bealls&amp;#39; former vacation homes in the Carolinas. Like Toad Hall, it was designed by Atlanta architect Jack Davis in log cabin style and named The Abe by Kreis Beall. &amp;quot;All I could think of when I saw it was Lincoln Logs. I even collected Lincoln memorabilia for it,&amp;quot; she recalls, adding, &amp;quot;That was a long-distance house; I was more removed from it. But when I did a house I was going to live in, I had to be completely involved in that.&amp;quot;\n\nThe Bealls have long been involved in their Great Smoky Mountains property developments, having founded their Relais Ch\u00E2teau resort, Blackberry Farm, in 1976\u2014&amp;quot;my labor of love for 33 years,&amp;quot; Kreis Beall notes. It is recognized by the Zagat guidebooks as one of the finest boutique hotels in America, and its main hotel and log cottages, which sit on a 4,200-acre property, are looked after by a staff of 120, including talented artisans such as a master cheese maker and a chocolatier.\n\nIn planning their new home on the magnificent mountain valley site adjacent to Blackberry Farm, Kreis Beall says, &amp;quot;I have a pet saying, which goes, \u2018Don&amp;#39;t agree with me, because I&amp;#39;ve already changed my mind.&amp;#39; So, after a lot of plans and a lot of meetings with our architect, I announced that I was changing course and wanted to build The Abe all over again. It fits the site so perfectly. For me, building a home is not all about blueprints but about materials and construction and about simplifying everything.&amp;quot;\n\nFor the interior designer, the challenges of the interiors&amp;#39; massive logs and boulders was not at first so simple. &amp;quot;How do you take a log house and introduce the fabulous?&amp;quot; Kasler asked herself. &amp;quot;It&amp;#39;s an English country house made out of logs\u2014a dark surround you&amp;#39;re working with, and everything had to have texture and dimension. Fabrics had to have enough weight to hold their own. Scale and strength were key elements.\n\n&amp;quot;The Bealls love architecture and design, and because of it, they really push the envelope. Working with them is special, because you get to do things that are unique. They pay attention to the details of everything, just as they do at Blackberry Farm.&amp;quot;\n\nStriking contrasts of rough and rugged with smooth and polished abound at Toad Hall. A gilt Regency mirror above a Chippendale sideboard is backed by the timbered walls, as is an antique Chinese lacquered screen. Below it is a second sideboard, which displays boldly colorful late-18th-century Coalport china in what Kasler describes as the &amp;quot;fabulous, enormous, all-in-one&amp;quot; great room, where the owners entertain. There are gleaming antique silver and glowing creamware collections in antique cabinets. A large and jauntily rococo northern European tapestry cartoon is key in taming a rough-hewn wall.\n\nThere are velvets, damasks, paisleys and tapestry fabrics mixed together in upholstery and accent pillows. Antique Oriental rugs are layered on larger sisal carpets. &amp;quot;Tone and texture, weight and texture, are in balance,&amp;quot; Kasler observes. &amp;quot;Every visual you go toward has such interest and pulls the interior together.&amp;quot; There are fabrics from the house of iconic English antiques dealer and designer Geoffrey Bennison, which Kasler also used in every room of Blackberry Farm&amp;#39;s Singing Brook Cottages. Bennison&amp;#39;s well-known, relaxed if studied, very grand and very English mix of Regency and William IV styles, with the odd note of the Victorian club, appears to inform much of Toad Hall&amp;#39;s interior, although his fabrics are the only immediate presence of pure Bennisonian style.\n\nGracefully conceived and thriving English-style gardens, designed by Mary Palmer Dargan, cover the site surrounding and articulating the compound&amp;#39;s five log structures. There is every possible native herb, shrub and flower, along with boxwood, rosemary and lavender, espaliered pears and apples, antique roses and even herbaceous terrestrial orchids.\n\nA madly picturesque two-room log cabin baptized Tadpole Cottage sits across a pond. Its function, defined by Kasler, could be said to be the universal function of all that Toad Hall embraces: &amp;quot;charm and folly!&amp;quot;"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/kasler-article>