In the latest issue of Architectural Digest Chilean-born interior designer Juan Pablo Molyneux conjured an exuberant confection of blue-and-white for the dining room of an old friend and client who purchased a 1920’s Spanish-Colonial-style villa sited on a dramatic bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean in tony Pebble Beach, California.
This isn’t the first time we’ve witnessed the power decorator’s love of blue-and-and white. Very recently Molyneux updated a vestibule at his 17th-century hôtel particulier in Paris, referencing a small pavilion at Versailles named Le Trianon de Porcelaine (no longer in existence) and the blue-and-white tiled rooms of Menshikov Palace in St. Petersburg, Russia. For his client’s home in Pebble Beach Molyneux more appropriately looked to northern Californian for inspiration: San Francisco Bay with its views of the harbor, the rolling hills of the region, and the nearby Spanish Carmel Mission. The process, based on the installation of tile at his own Paris home, involves scanning images and enlarging them digitally before transferring them to unfired clay tiles.
The dreamscape that envelops the dining room in inky, watery blues is energized by a panoply of pattern – floors inlaid with varying shades of golden hued wood in a stylized flower motif overlaid with a brilliant indigo area rug with large medallions, which are repeated in the curtain fabric; curvaceous Louis-XV-style blue-and-white painted chairs surrounding a gleaming French Empire table; a pair of elaborate 18th-century Chinese cabinets topped with brilliant blue-and-white Chinese ginger jars; and the organic whiplash design of the Art Nouveau-inspired ceramic mantel crowned by a striking Baroque 17th-century French mirror.
The scenes for the vestibule in Juan Pablo Molyneux’s Paris hôtel particulier are based on 18th-century engravings of three long-extinct chateaux.
Molyneux referenced engravings of Le Trianon de Porcelaine in Versailles for the design of a vestibule in his Paris home.
Molyneux also looked to the blue-and-white Dutch tiled walls of a reception room at Menshikov Palace in St. Petersburg for inspiration.
To read more about the luxurious rooms Juan Pablo Molyneux created in Pebble Beach visit Architectural Digest. The dining room photo was taken by Roger Davies.
Such soothing rooms…blue has a magical touch…instantly calming to my eyes.
Thank you for this post,
Victoria
So true, Victoria. Glad you enjoyed this post! If you love blue-and-white tile work you MUST visit Portugal. The azuelos are magnificent!
CW