Return To Eden

With her exquisite taste and eye for rich detail, pillow maker Rebecca Vizard transforms her rural Louisiana estate with funky French Quarter f lair.

You’re less than a mile from the Mississippi River, but this feels like the south of France. What is this magical place?

REBECCA VIZARD: Originally this was part of Locustland Plantation, a property on Lake Bruin just outside of St. Joseph, Louisiana, my hometown. My grandfather bought it in the 1950s. My husband and I moved here in the late ’80s from New Orleans, when my father asked him to help run the family business. I thought my life was over! My bottom lip shook for four years. But the isolation made me successful: I was so desperate to get something going that I took a big leap with my pillow business. 

M.K. QUINLAN: How did you get the idea to launch it? 

Before I started B. Viz Design, I was an interior designer. Custom pillows were costly, and I thought they should be really special. I created my first pillow out of antique textiles for a design job in New York. I was living in New Orleans when I started a business crafting one of­ a ­kind pillows. My book, Once Upon a Pillow, tells that story. 

This house looks older than its 30 years.