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L oyd Taylor is waiting out front when I pull up, with the carved wood door to a massive, vine-covered wall propped open. He ushers me inside, and we walk through an unruly courtyard garden withered by winter, past an ancient towering bronze pagoda and towards the small house where Taylor has lived for 15 years. Built in 1988 in Oak Lawn Heights by a man who owned a glass-manufacturing company, the house is almost completely transparent. Its L-shaped glass exterior reveals deep cinnabar-hued rooms laden with jeweled Tibetan religious relics and books. It may not be a high moun- tain lamasery shrouded in mist, but there's still an otherworldly Lost Horizon feel to this discovery, with its walled garden and secreted house brimming with rarities. "People have no idea what's back here," Taylor says. "You think you're going to walk into a room when you go through that big courtyard door — but it's a surprise." Surprises make people happy, he notes, and this house has brought him joy since he and his late partner, Paxton Gremillion, bought it in 2002. Inside, Taylor's house manager, Paul Sanchez — who also has maintained the Loyd-Paxton antiques showroom for the past 25 years — serves us sparkling water and tea on a silver tray while Taylor walks me around. Daizi, a 7-year-old rescued greyhound, trails behind us, her nails click- ing on the hardwood floors. Taylor looks down. "One last thing I'd like to do is stain these floors dark," he says. "But it's such an upheaval. I'll leave that for another time." Taylor is all too familiar with upheaval. Gremillion was diagnosed with cancer shortly after the couple moved here, and he spent a decade battling the disease. Taylor took over much of their interior design work, leaving little time or energy to decorate their new abode. Books and artifacts remained unpacked in boxes and stacked in rooms, and furniture was stored in a warehouse. The dining room served as a makeshift office, with only the bare essentials — a table, two chairs, and a fax machine. For 10 years, Taylor remembers, "We were literally just camping out here." Six months after Gremillion's death in 2014, Taylor finally began the slow process of unpacking and editing. He considered closing the showroom on Irving Boulevard but kept it open. He sold off what he didn't want and kept his favorites; he bought new furniture and had old pieces recovered. The house sprang to life, becoming the home he and Gremillion once envisioned. "I re- member when we first saw the house," says Taylor. "Paxton just opened that front door and said, 'This is it.'" L oyd Taylor and Paxton Gremil- lion met in 1959 at the Uni- versity of North Texas, where Gremillion studied concert pi- ano and Taylor pursued de- sign. They were inseparable. In 1960, they opened an antiques showroom, Loyd-Pax- ton, on Sale Street in Dallas, fueled by a collection of extraordinary Italian furnish- ings consigned to them by a globetrotting opera teacher from UNT. Their reputation and inventory grew quickly, and soon they had clients across the globe. In 1985, the store relocated to its opulent longtime location on Maple Avenue, where they lived above the shop, like European antiquarians. In its heyday, Loyd-Paxton was a candy jar of Asian and European rarities, frequented by an international jet set that included Sir Elton John and Saudi Prince Faisal. For his palace, the Sultan of Brunei bought crates of 69 Loyd Taylor in the front courtyard. In the entry, objects from Tibet and India surround a Ming Dynasty wine table. Loyd Taylor, age 21. Loyd Taylor, age 21.