This pair of double doors (only one set shown here) and another pair just like them originally adorned the Golden Gallery in the Palazzo Carrega-Cataldi, now the Chamber of Commerce in Genoa. They were purchased in Italy and brought to New York by the architect Stanford White in the 1890s. One pair, now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Rogers Fund, 1991.307a, b), stayed with White until his death in 1906. The Rough Point pair were destined for the ballroom of the Fifth Avenue mansion of William C. Whitney, which White was renovating at the time. Doris Duke bought the doors at the sale of the contents of another Newport mansion, Bois Dore, in 1977. Just as they were used in the Whitney Mansion, Duke used the doors in Rough Point as freestanding screens. One thing she changed, however, was the orientation of the hinges, leaving one pair of doors (the pair you see here) misaligned.

Doris Duke had a great fondness for antique ceramics and even went to the trouble of learning how to properly repair them. This piece probably appealed to her both for its complicated technique, known as fahua -- with an outer layer of turquoise blue openwork over a solid container -- and for its subject matter, the Eight Immortals of Chinese mythology celebrating the birthday of the god of longevity in the immortal land, depicted with pine trees and clouds over waves.

This pair of whimsical mechanical pieces (only one is shown here) were made in England for export to the Far East market. To fit English perceptions of Asian aesthetics, a pagoda shape includes animals exotic to Westerners such as elephants and ostriches. When operating, the devices play one of six tunes, and ships and horseback riders parade through painted backdrops revolving behind glass panels in the base. The automatons were acquired by Doris Duke in Bangkok, Thailand, in the 1960s.