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A narrow, blacktop driveway meanders through grassy hills dotted with bulls, horses, and creek beds as it approaches the home of multi-platinum country star Clay Walker and his family.
Slicing through 200 bucolic acres in rural Santa Fe, Tennessee, the driveway leaves one with the sensation of traveling on a country road of the 1940s.
At the end of this vista lies an 11,000-square-foot house encircled in wide porches, and painted white, hearkening to an era of whitewashed floorboards and iced tea sipped on the front porch.
Here, Clay has found an antidote to life on the road, singing such hits as “The Chain of Love” and “She Won’t Be Lonely Long.” Just as Marie-Antoinette created her farm at Le Hameau de la Reine, The Queen’s Hamlet, to escape the spotlight of Versailles, many a modern country music star has carved out a similarly archetypal farmstead in the hills that lie far south of Nashville.
With a wide smile and tousled hair, Clay is every inch the country star, but as he talks about his family’s home, he morphs into a Renaissance man. He describes the cottage garden he’s creating, talks about the larkspur he brought here from Mount Vernon, and elaborates on a gallery wall for fine art that is planned for their living room, à la Downton Abbey, the TV drama that also inspired the room’s massive fireplace.
“I love history, and Jess wanted to model this home around the 18th and 19th centuries,” Clay says. “So, we blended our tastes. She got 90 percent and I got 10.”
“I wanted the house to have that farmhouse feel and to look like it had been here for 100 years,” his wife Jessica explains.
Jessica exudes a delicate earthiness as she calmly walks from one child to the next, her willowy frame and high cheekbones hinting at her onetime career in modeling. The couple has four children, ranging in age from one to 10.
Stephen Piazza, of New Orleans, the project’s architect, worked with Nashville builder Joey Donnelly, of Donnelly Timmons & Associates, to create a settled, historic aesthetic that would satisfy Jessica’s vision while folding in Clay’s distinctive ideas, such as his Game of Thrones-inspired wine cellar. The interior was designed by the partners of the firm Alabaster & Walnut Designs, Sadhna Williams and Kristen Prudoff.
Upon entering the home, guests face a dramatically curved staircase and the arched doorways that infuse the home with an airy aesthetic. The dining room is lined with Thibaut’s neoclassical wallpaper, Historic Damask, and a slender Italian console with gilt trim is placed against a wall in a nod to Italy, where the couple has vacationed.
“We tried to include some references to their history together,” Williams says.
A second-floor balcony overlooks the cavernous living room; Clay calls this view “the catbird seat.” Occupying two niches are the busts of Apollo, the Greek god of music, and Diana, goddess of the woods, children, and childbirth.
For the living room, rough-hewn wooden beams were taken from a North Carolina fort, circa 1731, and repurposed as decorative rafters. The nine-inch-wide planks of pine that line the floor are from a circa-1760 warehouse, also in North Carolina.
In passing through the home, one is also struck by the array of antiques and art gleaned by Williams and Prudoff. Other sources include the online purveyor 1st Dibs, Nashville’s Preservation Station and GasLamp Antiques, and Atlanta’s Architectural Accents. Much of the art is from Bennett Galleries.
It’s a gorgeous mélange, yet the couple stresses that nothing is off limits for their four children, including the grand piano, flute, and guitar in the living room.
“The kids love it,” Jessica says. “They’ll have music night in here and they’ll play. The kids will also direct Clay.”
“There’s never a dull moment,” Williams adds.
“Not in this house,” Jessica laughs.