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| Vickie Dixon worked in management at French Lick Springs Hotel for 30 years, and she was responsible for buying this lobby table that was owned by both Liberace and Tammy Faye Bakker. |
Next time you’re perusing the lobby of French Lick Springs
Hotel and admiring all the modern accents, keep an eye out for a couple things
with historical significance.
They’re hiding in plain sight, along with the early-1900s desk
of former French Lick Springs Hotel owner Tom Taggart, which we featured in
a previous blog. Speaking of Taggart, his daughter is responsible for one
of the oldest decorative pieces in the hotel’s lobby area today. That wall painting of a
model ship in the concierge waiting area? It’s a Lucy Taggart original.
While her father was the most well-known Taggart as a
hotelier and prominent politician, Lucy also built a name for herself as a
prominent artist of the era. She moved to New York City at age 19 to study art
under accomplished artists. She sold her art and was featured at exhibits
across the country, then ended her stint as a practicing East Coast artist in
1929 and returned to the Midwest. The Herron Art Institute in Indianapolis was
her next stop, where Lucy taught painting and portraiture.
Lucy ran with authors and politicians and socialites, but her
privileged upbringing and successful career didn’t give her a big head. Colleagues
described her as much too modest about the artwork she crafted. Portraits were
her specialty along with painted landscapes, sculptures and still-life scenes —
including this ship painting in the lobby that could be 80 years old or more.
Across the lobby, there’s an ornately detailed table that’s
traveled a quirky path to French Lick. It’s another one of those things that
you can walk right past without noticing. The enormous vase of fresh flowers on
top of the table might grab your eye more than the table does.
But would you believe this table belonged to Liberace and
Tammy Faye Bakker before ending up here?
We’ll rely on Vickie Dixon to fill us in on the whole tale.
She’s retired now, but Vickie worked here for 30 years and was a manager in the
hotel for most of that time. After the hotel changed to new ownership in 1991,
they set out acquiring unique décor for the hotel.
“We purchased this table from an auction company in
Missouri,” Vickie explains. “It was originally owned by Liberace. When he
passed away, they had an estate sale and Tammy Faye and Jim Bakker purchased it
from his estate sale. Then when Tammy Faye Bakker and her husband had their
split-up, they had a second estate sale, which this table was put in, and a
gentleman from St. Louis purchased it. We had done business with him on
numerous occasions, just buying pieces and antiques. He always sent us a
catalog, and that table was in there. The picture in the catalog showed Liberace
playing a grand piano, and you can see that table in the background with the
pink marble top and all the gold leafing and the ladies holding the top of the
table.”
The table went up for grabs in a phone auction, though the
hotel’s owners were out of town when auction day arrived. So they left Vickie
in charge of trying to score the table. (Tammy Faye used it as her makeup
table, so the story goes.)
“It had so much history behind it, and it was so unique. They asked me if I would do a phone bid for them for that
table, because they wanted to purchase it and put it in the lobby,” Vickie recalls. “I said, ‘I’d be
glad to, just tell me what the limit is.’ The limit they said was $10,000. The
day came and I got on the phone and the bids just kept going up and up and up
and up. It got to $10,000 and I said yes."
She expected the bids to keep climbing.
“And the bidding stopped. And I was the purchaser of that
table,” Vickie says with a smile.
When the table arrived to French Lick, Vickie’s mom redid
all the gold leafing on it. With real gold paint — no shortcuts.
After more than 25 years, some of the paint has eroded,
revealing the red base underneath it. But the most well-worn things have some
of the best stories behind them, and this celebrity table certainly fits that
bill.