Arts & Culture Magazine - January/February 2008 - (Page 57) squares. Carpeting in the public areas was custom-designed of an Axminster weave in Ulster, Ireland. Antique Italian urns and hand-glazed painted millwork in the Vernona Restaurant, and a spectacular handmade Thai rug in the mahogany-trimmed John Ringling Boardroom are works of decorative art on par with the décor Mable Ringling herself collected for her Ca d’Zan mansion on numerous buying trips to Europe. The hotel art collection includes an impressive array of original landscapes and portraiture in oil by nineteenth and early twentieth century artists worth over $500,000. Guests to the hotel are welcomed by an original, hand-carved stone fountain sculpture created in Mexico and shipped to Sarasota in pieces by sculptor Guadalupe Dominques Herrera. Perhaps the Ritz-Carlton, Sarasota could have been the luxury hotel of John Ringling’s dreams and he walks its halls today. The ghost hotel on the beach may be only a distant memory, but 2,400 of its original rose-brown bricks lay in the courtyard today surrounded by a rose garden as a lasting tribute to John Ringling’s vision. Front Page (L to R): 2.400 of the original bricks from the unfinished Ritz-Carlton on Longboat Key in the courtyard of The Ritz-Carlton, Sarasota. Opposite Page (L to R): Antique Italian urn in the Verona Restaurant. Portrait of a Young Lady painting hanging in hotel lobby. This Page (top to bottom): The Ritz-Carlton, Sarasota hotel lobby. Italian and Spanish marble flooring. arts and culture magazine : : 57
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