A 300 Year Old English Drawing Room Hidden Inside a Dallas Texas House Living Room Tour

Now we'll go into the living room. This is a 300-year-old room exactly the size it was 300 years ago in Derbyshire, England. It is the oak drawing room from Wingerworth Hall, which was 30 miles from Chatsworth, home of the Duke of Derbyshire. This room was bought by William Randolph Hearst in London in the 1920s and sent, though the house was demolished in the 1920s, and the house, Hearst bought it, sent it to California to build into San Simeon, and they ended up not using the room. And he had an auction in the 1940s, and the architect, Wilson McClure, bought the room and built this house around it. This is a book of England's lost houses. It's houses that were demolished since the 1950s in England. And this is Wingerworth Hall, where this room came from. And it tells about it in this book by Giles Worsley. This is a copy of a watercolor of Wingerworth Hall, where this room came from. And it was right here on this corner was the oak drawing room at Wingerworth Hall. And I've got it in Dallas, and I actually went to the site of Wingerworth Hall when we went to the sale at Chatsworth. I love different styles of design. My personal house and what I like to live with is very traditional. I love antiques, I especially love English antiques, although I also like French antiques. But I like working with very contemporary furniture and also rustic. I've done several jobs in Colorado in ski lodges and log cabins. And that's a fun thing to do. And I've done several houses that are completely contemporary, where I don't have one single antique in there. This table is a table that we have made. I have a furniture collection called the Corley collection. And this is one of our pieces that we call it the Jocko table, because it's sort of reminiscent of Giacometti. These are French reproduction chairs. That's a big old sofa that I had made that turns into a bed. I had it in my New York apartment. But I can't turn it into a bed. And I don't need to turn it into a bed here. These wonderful big windows were are modern, of course, they were designed by the architect Wilson McClure when he built the house around the room. Oh, this is very interesting. But this room was originally dark brown. It's oak. And he bleached the paneling with all kinds of poisonous bleaches and acids. And they had to leave the two open so that the air would come in because it would have killed anyone that came into all these fumes. But it turned out to be this beautiful, the beautiful color of the wood that came from that bleaching. And it's, it's sort of the color that everyone wants for bleach paneling. This fireplace is Italian statuary marble. And there's a when we went to Chatsworth, there is a similar one, very similar in Chatsworth done by the same builder architect who did Wingerworth Hall also worked at Chatsworth. In 17, Wingerworth was finished in 1720. This is the best fireplace that it draws perfectly. And I thought about building a fire today, but it's too hot. Oh, the architect, Wilson McClure, did this pine floor and painted it black, which I really loved. And when I got the house, we painted it black again. Well, just put another coat on it. And I love the black floor. We can see a lot of people in here. And, and we do I can have I've had as many as 100 people in this house at at Christmas. And they go into the study into the dining room. And if the weather's nice enough, they can go outside in the garden. We've cut that down to just family now. What is the secret to hosting a great party? It's getting the right guests, I think is the most important and being relaxed and and having fun at your own party. We have a collection of Ming Dynasty blue and white porcelains that came from the Chinese junk, which was a it was a ship that were sailing from China to Amsterdam. And it sank in 17 before 1740. It sank in the South China Seas, and a Captain Hatcher located it and pulled back all of these porcelains and and they went on to they took them to Amsterdam where Christie's had a big sale. And my friend Betty Gertz, who had a wonderful antique shop bought about almost half of the collection. And I've acquired them from Betty. These are all little pieces that were they were on their way to Amsterdam in before the end of the Ming Dynasty. And how long did they live at the bottom of the sea? For 300 years, and which gave them a patina that's slightly rough. It gives it a velvety feel from the saltwater. Here are the little tickets that from the I've left the tickets on the pieces showing that they're from the Christie's sale. These are Italian Louis the 16th chairs and they're they're covered in an Hermes leather in this parrot green. And we've got four in the living room and then we have four in the dining room and the dining room table can expand and or can see any number of people but we've got eight chairs like this. This is a very modern house with with an ancient room in it and and English furniture. Oh this this is a wonderful table. This is an Irish Georgian table and the top is all one piece of wood which is very rare that there was a mahogany plank that wide but I love that table. Now we'll go in the study through this door and the study connects we have a wood wonderful wood burning fireplace in here that also has wonderful draw and we use these wood burning fireplaces all the time in the winter. This is the only tv so that you sit in these wonderful old leather chairs and sit here and watch television. I don't like seeing them. These that one we were so lucky to get a television that fit exactly between the styles of the bookcases. The oh this is good interesting these I was in Paris in the flea market and I saw these two Georgian bookcases they're George III and I thought they would be perfect for this room. So after I came home I called the dealer. It was an English actually a Scottish dealer in France who had them for sale and the the French aren't crazy about English furniture which is nice so we got a good price on this pair. I think one tends to run out of book space so we we normally have they're piled around in tracks which I don't mind. That's a French painter and he's listed in the Benezet book and I've forgotten his name but I love dogs and I love dog paintings. I do some on the computer and this this is a laptop but it just stays there. I don't pick it up and take it with me. I use my iPhone and iPad sort of like a computer. I've always got my phone and I if I get the magnifying glass I can read articles out of the newspaper on this little bitty phone. The laptop connects to the television so we can use the television monitor there as a screen. It's hard to keep up with it. I need a IT person to constantly be working on it because things seem to go out of whack. I didn't kill these tortoise. These I got these in Europe in the flea market and they're very very old and I think that it's bad people collecting tortoise shell because I like the turtles but I had these so I hung them. There's no point in getting rid of them. They're all those are 18th century turtles. Thanks for watching. Go to homeworthy.com for exclusive content and shopping guides.