The Green Drawing Room

Johnston claimed that his reason for buying this house was this room. Originally it finished at the marble step with a pair of shuttered French doors leading to an open verandah. Johnston removed the wall and created the conservatory in about 1970. The wallpaper, carpet and curtains, although replacements, are stylistically much as they were in his time.

The most significant item of furniture here is the Louis XV Bureau Plat, a magnificent piece (c.1745), reputedly the desk on which King Farouk of Egypt signed his abdication in 1952. The ormolu mounts carry a date punch (the C-Couronné mark used 1745-9) indicating that the tax on bronze, levied by Louis XV, had been paid. The desk bears the stamps of two ébénistes - that of Jean-David Fortanier, the maker, beneath the carcass and that of Jean-Charles Ellaume beneath the central drawer.

Examples of French furniture of this date and calibre are rare in Australia. Johnston bought this piece in Cairo from a dealer who bought it at the month-long sale held at the Koubei Palace, Cairo, after Farouk's abdication.

Among other pieces is a magnificent Cuban mahogany breakfront bookcase (c.1770), reputedly once the property of Violet, Lady Beaumont, the daughter of a successful Edwardian financier. Here also is a very fine Pembroke table with an oval mahogany top and an inlaid band of pen worked boxwood; a fold-over tea table (c.1775), with concertina extension and a day bed painted blue and buff, in the manner of the architect and designer Robert Adam (c.1770).

Some of Johnston's most cherished things are also in this room; in particular a pair of late 18th-century English Hepplewhite chairs in the French style, covered in yellow silk damask, and a matching mahogany, serpentine shaped tea table with rosewood cross-banding, again English in the French manner (c.1770) with reeded cabriole legs, the tops of which are decorated with carved volutes.

On the walls hang some fine works of art - a large and dramatic oil on canvas bearing an inscription suggesting that it was painted by Pietro da Cortona and dated 1635, acquired in Melbourne and depicting the Christ Child being presented to St Simeon; a view of Alva House by Nasmyth (c.1800) and, beside the bookcase, four miniatures on ivory of members of the Jolly family, by the notable miniaturist James Scouler, painted between 1782 and 1788.

In this room are two notable looking glasses. The smaller, hanging between the windows, is George III period gilt wood, carved with festoons of flowers; the other, apparently hanging where Johnston placed it, is English, possibly 18th century, although regilded and probably with some later glass. The chandelier is English (c.1820) and was reputedly acquired from the Maharajah of Tagore who apparently visited Johnston in this house, an event of some moment which prompted elaborate preparations.