Inside a Sophisticated, Art-Filled Family Home in Dallas

The New York–based decorator Damon Liss repackages his clients’ cosmopolitan collection for their new home in Texas
Cream living room with blue artwork

Damon Liss had barely finished renovating a Tribeca loft for a family of five when they called him to say they were moving to Dallas and wanted his help. The designer was faced with an unusual challenge: transferring the contents of an edgy New York apartment—one with exposed pipes and quirky alcoves—into a fairly traditional Texas house, one with a central staircase and neatly rectangular reception rooms. “When we take on a new project, we’re almost always starting from scratch, but in this case we had all these recently acquired pieces,” says Liss, who established his namesake Manhattan studio more than a decade ago. “There was no mandate to use everything, but it made sense to keep a lot of the furniture.”

It helped that Liss knew his clients’ inventory by heart, which made the task of rejiggering the puzzle a little bit easier. There was, for example, a rare 1960s bronze coffee table by Philip and Kelvin LaVerne, a 1950s brass-and-mahogany bench by Harvey Probber, a contemporary dining table from BDDW topped with a stunning walnut slab, and a collection of whimsical vessels by the Haas Brothers, an L.A.-based design duo. Liss was also familiar with their impressive collection of contemporary art, which includes works by Yayoi Kusama, Ellsworth Kelly, and Andy Warhol. A Kusama painting with blue-gray dots populating an off-white background served as a foundational piece in the living room. Inspired by Kusama’s cloudlike composition, Liss bathed the space in soothing hues: Walls were painted creamy beige; curtains were made of light gray wool bouclé; and a silk rug, featuring the same shade of muted blue as the painting, graced the floor. “It looks like it was made for this home,” Liss says of the artwork.

Four Andy Warhol screen prints, from a series called Camouflage, hang in the dining area of the kitchen. The resin-topped pedestal table, with a custom lazy Susan, is from Wüd, and the leather-backed chairs are from BDDW.

While many of the pieces in the 7,000-square-foot, five-bedroom residence, located in the Park Cities enclave within Dallas, came from the family’s previous home in Manhattan, Liss added a number of new purchases. In the formal dining room, he paired that BDDW walnut-slab table with eight of Sergio Rodrigues’s Cantu chairs in ebonized wood and tan leather, and found a vintage Franco Albini cabinet to complete the sophisticated yet earthy look of the space. He commissioned a striking, sculpted plaster chandelier from Alexandre Logé.

“Damon helped us reprise the majority of the furniture we had in New York, and he also made minor tweaks that were major,” says the client, mentioning things like a sleek new railing on the staircase and sculptural new lighting throughout the home. “He had a really smart approach to the project, and now the house feels like it really belongs to us.”