Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/1284206
60 Above: In the entrance hall are original features from the 1927 house, including ceiling plasterwork, leaded-glass window, and the iron balustrade. Painting by British artist Ian Davenport. Opposite page; top left: Alvise Orsini designed the Italianate garden. Right and bottom: The pool house is tented in striped Iksel fabric from Schumacher. Fortuny lamps. Collection of brass plates from the Middle East. A lvise and Geoffroy focused their search for a Dallas house in the Lakewood and Lower Greenville neighborhoods, whose diverse, young residents and unpretentious lifestyle, combined with large green and park areas, was the perfect setting in which to settle and raise their twin boys. They fell in love with a 1927 Italianate-style house in Lakewood the moment they stepped inside. Designed by architect Anton Korn, it was previously owned by members of the Hunt family, adding a touch of old-school Texas glamour to the impressive classical proportions of the building, with its original architectural elements on the façade and interiors preserved. In the entry, a grand staircase leading to the bedroom floor is flanked by two large leaded-glass windows, infusing the hall with gold-tinted light like that of a sunset radiating from Venice's Grand Canal. An exquisite carved neo-Renaissance-style marble mantelpiece in the main drawing room and intricate plasterwork decorating the ceilings remind the couple of the European houses in which they both grew up; Alvise was born and raised in Venice, and Geoffroy is from Belgium. Their tastes are reflected in the drawing-room decoration, which is a mix of modern and contemporary art and objects and important antiques they've inherited or acquired (some recently from Nick Brock Antiques and Debris Dallas). Geoffroy's Pop Art set of Andy Warhol's Queen Ntombi Twala of Swaziland is backed by a wall painted celestial blue, one of Alvise's preferred hues. It harmonizes with an important 18th-century duchesse brisée bought in Paris and reupholstered in a rare brocatelle silk of the same period. (Continued)