Wendy and Emery Reves acquired several exceptional examples of European furniture, although they did not focus their collecting in this area. Most of the furniture used by the couple was already in situ at Villa La Pausa when they purchased the estate in 1953. During the period when Coco Chanel and the Duke of Westminster occupied the villa, a significant amount of 16th- and 17th-century-style furniture was shipped to the house from one of the duke's numerous English homes. Many of these furnishings, however, were in a poor state of preservation when the Reveses came to La Pausa. Nevertheless, Wendy Reves decided to restore the pieces rather than replace them, and she converted a garage on the property into a workshop so that she could oversee the conservation

Adapted from

Dallas Museum of Art, Decorative Arts Highlights from the Wendy and Emery Reves Collection (Dallas, Texas: Dallas Museum of Art, 1995), 43.