About 45 years ago, a slightly cracked piece of majolica started Randy Jones on a lifetime of collecting. While visiting clients for his Houston-based paint-finishing and custom-furniture company, Decorative Arts Incorporated, he stops at estate sales, antiques shops, and building salvage suppliers for items as diverse as Last Supper images (he owns 70-plus), arrowheads, butterfly specimens, and fishing lures. “I like collecting things that interest me, that are affordable, and that I can find when I travel,” he says. “That’s when it’s exciting.”

TAKE A BALANCED APPROACH
Randy plays up the room’s symmetry by framing the French doors with fanciful 1930s Art Deco lamps that once lit up a theater lobby and now illuminate rows of black-and-white Wedgwood plates featuring scenes of the University of Chicago. On the table, magnolia blossoms tuck into crystal-and-ruby glass vases that find equilibrium with a gilded soup tureen.