Leave your high heels at home when you visit Diana Lee and RoyStahlgren. Uneven stepping stones snake across a deep pool of waterfrom their front gate to the door. Tread carefully past the miniaturepines and a head-turning waterfall, or you'll get dunked before youreach the main entrance.
The two have a quick defense for the unusual landscaping at theirDenver home.
"The evil spirits can only walk in a straight line, so the idea isthat the spirits will fall in the pond," Diana says, adding that thehome faces south for good luck.
It wasn't superstition but an interest in Eastern traditions thatdirected this and other design choices. The home serves as a showcasefor culturally rich collections of artful calligraphy, rare books andexquisite Chinese porcelain.
Diana, a petroleum geologist and MIT-trained scientist, was bornin China and raised in Hong Kong. Roy, a Pennsylvania native, isretired as chief of surgery at Denver's St. Joseph Hospital.
"Arts and culture do not really have a geopolitical boundary,"Diana says. "So it is probably one of the best ways of cultivatingunderstanding between people."
The couple discovered a bond in the spring of 1997, when Roy heardDiana give a talk about the handover of Hong Kong back to China andits impact on that colony.
To do research on the Hong Kong antiques market before a tripthere, she visited Roy's Denver home to look at his collection ofantique blue-and-white Chinese porcelain.
"He was collecting pieces from every dynasty, and he displayedthem like books in the library. He lined them up like soldiers withequal spaces between each piece," she says.
Hours passed as they discussed Chinese history and philosophies,including beliefs about virtue and ethics.
Then it happened. Roy offered Diana some peonies from his garden.She was shocked.
"As a properly brought-up Chinese woman, thoughts flew through myhead. If I don't accept them, I'll sound peevish. If I do, then hewill think I am being forward."
Roy didn't understand the message he was sending; in Chineseculture, peonies are a symbol of male virility.
However, Diana's sense of humor prevailed, and their relationshipmoved forward. Both of them had been widowed, and Roy's four childrenwere grown. Over time they talked about marriage.
They also talked about expanding Roy's collection.
"With Diana's help and her contacts in Hong Kong, we becameinterested in the Neolithic Dynasty, which goes back to 4,000 B.C.,and the Han Dynasty, which dates from 206 B.C. to 221 A.D.," he says.
"I said if he was willing to focus, I would help him build thebest collection of its kind," Diana says.
The two also realized they would need a better home to display thecollection, so after their wedding in 1998 they asked a real-estateagent to find them a south-facing residence that had enough room fora front yard water feature.
Within six months, a 3,500-square-foot home turned up in a gatedcommunity east of Denver, but it would require extensive remodeling.
"There had to be maximum wall space in order to display the art,as well as Roy's collection of rare books, because we both wanted tolive with the art," Diana says. "He also has a large collection ofWestern paintings, and I have a lot of Chinese paintings andcalligraphy. You have to blend those two styles together and alsoblend the household furnishings."
Today, after 3oe years of remodeling, their front door opens intoa foyer where eight small statues of dogs provide one last line ofdefense against bad spirits. Their ancient clay bodies are rigid,their curled clay lips baring sharp teeth.
To the left is an opening from the basement to the top floor. Wirecables suspend semi-transparent shelves in mid-air, each bearing manyNeolithic pots.
The kitchen on the other side of the display area is neat andcompact, lending a simple geometry to the rest of the house. Darkwood floors are brightened with throw rugs, and a round table andchairs provide a comfortable place for breakfast or conversation.
For the main backdrop color, Diana chose wall paint in a gray-green hue that matches one of her Chinese paintings. Combined withoff-white for ceilings and trim, the color makes unglazed clay potsand other artifacts pop.
To the right of the front door, the couple's high-ceiling galleryis darkened with shutters to protect antiquities against Colorado'ssun. High on the walls, Diana displays her collection of Chinesecalligraphy, an art she practices herself in an upstairs study. Lowershelves are full of ancient pots and water jars from China'sNeolithic period, when people began to settle into communities, raiseanimals and grow plants for food.
To create a natural separation between the large gallery and aformal dining area, the two had a large rectangular hole cut into thefloor and covered it with weight-bearing glass. On top of the glass,they display a Han Dynasty horse and cart they purchased in 1997.
The glass floor is an optical illusion that keeps people away fromthe artifact during parties, Roy says. "People just rear back."
A curved stairway leads to the second level, which opens out intoRoy's study. A red wall is decorated with a series of porcelainpanels that show domestic scenes of Chinese life.
From the study, one direction leads to the master bath, the otherto the bedroom, which Diana has decorated with peonies, a gentlereminder of her husband's first bouquet to her.
The headboard has been created out of carved, gold-leafed peonyshapes that once decorated the ancient entrance to a Chinese home.The outline of a peony also is embroidered into the bed's silkcoverlet.
The home's garden level two flights below is built into the sideof a hill; its windows look out on a walled Chinese garden. A seatingarea is surrounded by shelves full of more antique pottery. Opposite,the deep windows display Roy's blue-and-white porcelains.
In another part of the space, Roy's rare books, collected sinceadolescence, fill a series of floor-to-ceilings shelves. Stand in thecenter of the shelves, look up and you'll discover the couple'scollection of pottery hung on the translucent shelves overhead.
The integration of art, architecture and culture is important tothe couple.
"We wanted to live with our art," Diana says. "But the pleasure isnot from owning the objects. The pleasure and the satisfaction comefrom using the objects to glean an understanding of a culture and asociety so many years ago."
She gets especially excited when she and her husband greet eachChinese New Year with friends.
"I grew up with this," she says, referring to her childhood inHong Kong. She first came to the United States at the age of 16 tostudy petroleum geology at college.
"Nobody told me that I had to do this, but I have a strong desireto carry on the tradition and pass it on and share it."
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