From The Big Easy And Back to Big D

After 20 years of fine art and antiques appraising in the historical and cultural mecca of New Orleans, Preston Hollow’s Rachel Weathers of Weathers Appraisal Associates is glad to be back home.

“I live only about a mile and a half from the house where I grew up,” she comments on her home of five years now. “Dallas has always been a dynamic city. I love being back in my childhood neighborhood. I’m home.”

Her love of the arts blossomed at the Booker T. Washington High School for Performing Arts and the University of Texas at Austin. Then she worked in several Dallas galleries before heading to graduate school at Tulane.

Not seeing her future in academia, Weathers landed a job at a New Orleans auction house, eventually working for the prestigious Neal Auction Company for 15 years — working her way up to director of furniture, then director of paintings for five years.

“New Orleans is a historic, beautiful place, but not a good place to have a health issue,” Weathers said. The increasing medical care of her special needs son necessitated a return to Dallas.

“I was having trouble finding a good neurologist,” she said, which prompted flights to Children’s Hospital in Dallas for better care. Her parents encouraged the move back and helped her family find a house close by in the old neighborhood.

Back in Dallas, Weathers joined the team at Heritage Auctions.

“I’m grateful for my three and a half years at Heritage,” Weathers said. “After 20 years in New Orleans, I was able to come home and have dinner with my mom and dad any night of the week. I am a licensed auctioneer in the State of Texas through Heritage. I worked full-time as senior appraiser, a concentration I did not have time for in New Orleans.

“Heritage is a pretty jet-set company, and they tried to accommodate my obligations at home and minimized my travel,” she said. “As Heritage made plans to move the headquarters near DFW airport, I worried about the logistics of care for my special needs child and being available for my parents. When the tornado of 2019 flew over my house and scrambled homes on the blocks on both sides of us, it was time to step back.”

Friend Brant Laird gave Weathers a part-time job at Consignment Heaven. “He has taught me so much about Park Cities collecting and decorating.”

No longer constrained by remote learning with her children, she procured an office in the J Garrett Auctioneers building at 9203 Diplomacy Row in the warehouse district. She is a consultant operating as Weathers Appraisal Associates.

“It’s great to have collaboration instead of just one person working alone,” she said. J Garrett is “a family business. They’ve done the T. Boone Pickens and Bo Pilgrim estates and will soon host a signing of Preston Hollow resident John Phifer Marrs’s new book Interiors for Collectors and the accompanying auction of part of his collection.”