Woodson Antiques & Interiors owner Blake Craghead says he learned to love antiques as a kid, driving around mid-Missouri with his father to auctions. If a piece was made of walnut, he says, they’d likely stay all day to bid on it. 

“He was, I guess you would say, a collector and a refurbisher,” Blake says, “and so the entire home was basically filled with antiques.”

The same is true today of Blake’s ivy-covered West Plaza home, charmingly entered via cobblestone off-street parking and an iron gate. Spunky goldendoodle Woodson—also the shop’s ambassador—may bark a greeting from the back patio, which is currently undergoing a transformation centered on a fence-height lion’s head fountain from neighbor and longtime antiques dealer Linda W. Pearce.

The pair of homes stand out among the surrounding bungalows and modern infills, appearing as though in a faraway time and place of their own in terms of material choices, antique additions and landscaping.

Behind a hedge of European hornbeam, Blake’s one-bedroom home isn’t large by today’s standards—but high ceilings and skylights make it feel quite spacious. Blake enclosed a patio to gain extra space for a dining room, in which he hired an artisan to build out a cupboard using salvaged doors from France.

A large tapestry dated from 1580 makes a statement about the technology of the day: It shows Alexander the Great looking into the latest invention—the mirror.

Blake also salvaged and restored patterned oak floors, which he had laid throughout the dining room and kitchen.

“They were painted blue and red, and I had to get out the sander with super gritty sandpaper to get it all off,” Blake says.