Monthly Archives: September 2014

Le Pavillon des Rêves de Jacques Garcia

Posted September 29, 2014. Filed in Jacques Garcia, Orientalism, Pleasure Pavilions

Jacques Garcia has been renovating and perfecting his 17th-century château, Champ de Bataille, for over twenty-years, the subject of his second monograph recently released that I covered in A Man and His Castle: Château du Champ de Bataille. As with many grand estates of its period the decorative fantasies of its owner were expressed as […]

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Throwback Thursday: Mimi London 1973

Posted September 25, 2014. Filed in Elemental Design, The California Look, Uncategorized

The year is 1973. Imagine receiving your January/February issue of Architectural Digest in the mail and laying your eyes on these rooms for the first time. Had you ever seen anything like it? Chances are you were witness to the inception of the California Look attributed to Michael Taylor. Alongside Taylor was interior designer Mimi […]

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Spanish Designer Paco Muñoz in Castille

Posted September 24, 2014. Filed in Paco Muñoz, Spanish & Portuguese Country Houses

For several years now, since blogging took the Internet by storm, a photo of a bedroom I had once admired began to circulate. And, more recently, the same bedroom began showing up on Pinterest. I kept thinking to myself “If I love the bedroom this much the rest of the residence must be equally charming. […]

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John Rosselli & Furlow Gatewood

Posted September 23, 2014. Filed in English Country House Style, Gracious Living

The names John Rosselli and Furlow Gatewood ring instantly familiar, two shining stars in the world of interior design – John with his now twenty-two-year old home decor emporium, Treillage, in New York, and Furlow basking in the current fanfare surrounding his charming compound of American Southern Gothic cottages in Georgia. But, did you know […]

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Fit For Dutch Masters

Posted September 22, 2014. Filed in Belgian-Dutch Style, Uncategorized

I don’t usually post articles on current features in American shelter magazines because, for one, almost every other interiors blogger does and, two, the information is readily available both in print and on-line. Yet, this charming and romantic Cape Dutch-style house sited on a lake amidst a grove of oak trees elicited pause. Perhaps I’m […]

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Favorite Vintage Ads Friday: Atelier Martex 1983

Posted September 19, 2014. Filed in Favorite Vintage Ads

If you have been following my recent installment, Favorite Vintage Ads Friday, you will know how taken I was, and remain, with regard to the Atelier Martex ad campaigns of the 1980’s. Often employing well-known designers to conjure seductive atmospheres for a waiting clientele, each setting evokes a particular mood and place in time. The […]

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Charles Sévigny and Yves Vidal at Le Moulin des Corbeaux

Posted September 18, 2014. Filed in Charles Sévigny, Classical Moderne, Modernism, Yves Vidal

I was so delighted to rediscover the work of Charles Sévigny, who I featured in the last Throwback Thursday post, Charles Sévigny, that I pulled down more 1970’s issues in search of his work. I found it in the March/April issue of Architectural Digest. As I mentioned prior, M. Sévigny designed for the beau monde […]

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Forever Hicks

Posted September 17, 2014. Filed in Classic Chic, Classic Contemporary, Classical Moderne, David Hicks

Forty-nine years ago, in 1965, David Hicks decorated this apartment for an undisclosed client, referred to as “Lady X”, comprising two floors running the length of two 1830’s houses overlooking Hyde Park in London. In 2003 his son, Ashley Hicks, was alerted to its preserved state and was encouraged to view it when he was […]

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Swangrove at Badminton House

In the last chapter of three posts featuring the houses of Badminton in Gloucestershire, England, we visit Swangrove, the Duke of Beaufort’s hunting lodge on the Badminton estate. Several years ago the Duke commissioned the venerable Robert Kime to revamp and refresh the neglected “hovel”, as the Duke referred to it, into a respite of […]

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The Cottage at Badminton

Today’s post is a continuation of the story of the Somerset’s at Badminton, their ancestral home in the countryside of Gloucestershire, England. In Badminton Revisited we dropped in on David Somerset, the Duke of Beaufort, and the current duchess, at the grand and imposing Badminton House, built in the reign of Charles II and later […]

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Badminton House Revisited

As a follow-up to the last post, Design Focus on Vivien Greenoch, I want to share more of the grandeur that is Badminton House, and the commission that Greenoch and her senior, the legendary Tom Parr, received in 1984 when the Somersets moved from Badminton Cottage to Badminton House as David Somerset succeeded the Duke […]

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Design Focus on Vivien Greenock

You may recognize some of the rooms featured in today’s post but most probably, like myself, until now you didn’t know the name of the designer behind the look. The name of the designer in question is Vivien Greenoch. Vivien worked at Colefax and Fowler for twenty-seven years until 2000, at which juncture she broke […]

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