Author Archives: Cristopher

Palazzo Parisi

Posted October 10, 2013. Filed in Italian Country Houses

Today we venture beyond the Tuscan border to Oliveto in the Sabine Hills, north-east of Rome in the Lazio province, to visit Villa Parisi, the childhood home of landscape designer Arabella Lennox-Boyd. Her father, Piero Parisi, purchased the castle sight-unseen in the early 1940’s. It wasn’t until after returning from the war that he first […]

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Under The Tuscan Sun

From the Etruscans’ who left behind many roads that are still traveled today, to the expansive power of the Roman Empire and the Medici family, who financed  much of the Renaissance, Tuscany is rich in history, romantic ancient villages, rustic farmhouses and elegant villas, distinctive regional cuisine, and soft rolling hills for as far and […]

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Hail, Anthony!

Posted September 25, 2013. Filed in Anthony Hail, Classic Elegance, Neoclassical

Anthony Hail, that is – the late, great arbiter of classical restraint who ruled over the San Francisco Bay Area’s design cognoscenti beginning in the 1950’s until his passing in 2006, fashioning timeless interiors for elite patrons. On October 8th select lots of furnishings and objets d’arts from the estate he shared with his late […]

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Hello, Yellow!

The color yellow has been getting its due lately. In just the past few months it seems to be popping optimistically from the pages of shelter magazines and design books. Perhaps it is a reflection of the times in which we live, with sights set on a brighter future, or a longing and remembrance of […]

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Tughill House

Posted September 13, 2013. Filed in Colefax & Fowler, English Country House Style, Stanley Falconer

Tughill House, the Cotswolds cottage of the late director of Colefax & Fowler, Stanley Falconer, is the epitome of the English country-house — or country-cottage — style, with its rooms designed for comfort, function and understated luxury. Its contents recently went on the block with Christie’s earlier this month, two years after Falconer’s passing. Falconer […]

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Russian Fantasia, Then and Now

Posted September 10, 2013. Filed in Neoclassical, Peter Marino

In April of this year psychologist, writer and intellectual Mona Ackerman’s co-op apartment at 1020 Fifth Avenue, opposite the Met, went on the market for $25 million following her death. Oh, and by the way, that would be cash only, if you’re interested. In the late 1980’s Ms. Ackerman hired society architect and interior designer […]

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Riviera Style: Villa Nara Mondadori

Posted September 9, 2013. Filed in Moderne, Peter Marino, Riviera Style, Villas

Villa Nara Mondadori was designed and constructed by architect Oscar Niemeyer on Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat in 1968, a Modernist anomaly amidst Belle Époque mansions peppered up and down the Côte d’Azur. But it no less signifies a taste for luxury by the monied set than does its extroverted, elaborate and highly stylized neighboring pink and ocher manses. […]

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Riviera Style: Villa Corinne

Konstantin and Natasha Kagalovsky had set their eyes for some time on the blush pink Belle Époque era villa next door to their own, Villa Mona – a golden-ocher villa built in 1902 with access to a private beach – on Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat.  “We were thinking how nice it would be if one day we could join […]

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Riviera Style: Le Clos Fiorentina

In the last post, Riviera Style, I extolled the sun-kissed charms of the French Riviera’s heyday and inception as playground to the rich and famous, beginning in the early 20th-century, stopping along the way to visit The Gerald Murphy’s at their Villa America in Cap d’Antibes, Coco Chanel at Villa La Pausa, Lady Kenmare and […]

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Riviera Style

There are few places that possess that heady combination of miles of stunning coastal scenery and white sand beaches, crystalline blue skies, a temperate climate, picturesque villages, gilded mansions and a glamorous, storied past as does the French Riviera. From St. Tropez to Monaco the beau monde of this fabled coast of the rich and […]

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Provence Pastoral

Posted August 2, 2013. Filed in Jean-Louis Raynaud, Provence, Understated Luxury

The Toujours Provence series comes to a close with Janet de Botton’s extraordinary Provencal bastide and surrounding farmland in Les Baux, the rugged Southwest region of France, oft blogged about since its appearance in Vogue a few years back. Intent on finding a property with views – as opposed to the usual ones protected from […]

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An American in Provence

Posted July 30, 2013. Filed in Dick Dumas, Provence

As we near the close of the Toujours Provence series of posts today we  go back in time to the late American decorator Dick Dumas’ country house, just outside Ménerbes, in Oppède-le-Vieux, Provence. A restaurant when he discovered the property, Dumas converted it to his personal retreat, set in a 12th-century village with views of the […]

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