Category Archives: Chateaux

Chez Givenchy: Le Jonchet Revisited

Posted February 18, 2016. Filed in Chateaux, French Country Houses, French Style, Hubert de Givenchy

Like many of you my mind has been drifting to Springtime, the season when everything begins to appear dew fresh and full of promise. The greens are greener, the days longer, and the light stronger. While falling down the rabbits hole that is Pinterest I discovered photos I had never seen before of Hubert de […]

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Winter Gardens

L’esprit du jardin d’hiver is in the air, a quest for a life-affirming sanctuary in colder climes. Russian royalty dedicated palaces to Winter, as with the sixteen-hundred room Winter Palace of the Romanov’s in St. Petersberg. Emperor Nikolai I decreed that Russian artist Eduard Gau create watercolor renderings of the Winter Palace’s interior, the Russian Empire’s […]

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Axel Vervoordt: The Art of the Room, Part II

Art is as natural to an Axel Vervoordt interior as the horizon is to a landscape. In my last post, Axel Vervoordt: The Art of the Room, Part I, photographs of vignettes taken within the designer’s Belgian castel focuses on his sensitive and exacting curatorial prowess at creating tableau that stirs the mind, soul and […]

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Axel Vervoordt: The Art of the Room, Part I

Since winter I have had a copy of the British Elle Decoration annual publication “Country” setting handily nearby with the intention of sharing a feature on the residence of May and Axel Vervoordt outside Antwerp, Belgium. However, soon it was buried beneath a pile of other intriguing publications, many of which are still on “the […]

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Timeless Chic at Clos Videlot

It seems that, in the world in which we live and orbit today, nearly every aesthetic image has been posted, pinned and uploaded into the ether. As a part-time blogger I often grow tired of rediscovering the same repeated information and imagery that can be found from the original source – accurately credited, I might […]

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Château Fourcas-Hosten: A Return to Glory

Château Fourcas-Hosten is a dream of a wine estate with a fairy-tale ending. Located in the Listrac appellation in the Médoc region of Bordeaux, it was conceived by Jean-Baptiste Hosten, a lawyer, in the 18th-century, its 116 acres planted with grapevines for as far as the eye could see. It was eventually ceded to the […]

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In Search of Lost Time

Yesterday I was in the mood to leave winter behind for somewhere exotic and my journey took to me to Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé’s Russian folly, a reproduction of a dacha, on the their property at Château Gabriel on the coast of Deauville in Normandy, France. (See Russian Reverie). After pouring over articles […]

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Le Galerie des Cerfs

Posted October 15, 2014. Filed in Chateaux, French Country Houses, Hunt Country Style

The Galerie des Cerfs (Trophy Gallery) at Château de Fontainebleau was conceived by Henry IV in c1600 as a paean to hunting, consisting of a promenade of semicircular arches forming an arcade. Its plaster walls were painted by Louis Poisson with murals depicting bird’s eye views of royal estates, set into grey wood paneling in the […]

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A Man and His Castle: Château du Champ de Bataille

Posted July 21, 2014. Filed in Chateaux, French Country Houses, Jacques Garcia

Fresh off the presses is Spanish interior designer Jacques Garcia’s second monograph, Jacques Garcia: Twenty Years of Passion, featuring his beloved Château du Champ de Bataille, a 17th-century estate in Normandy. Garcia purchased the property twenty years ago, then in derelict state, and has worked tirelessly since restoring and furnishing every glorious inch to sublime delight. Four-hundred […]

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Château Pouy-sur-Vannes

Posted July 15, 2014. Filed in Chateaux, Juan Pablo Molyneux

Maximalist interior decorator Juan Pablo Molyneux recently transformed a château in Pouy-sur-Vannes, about two hours outside Paris, for himself as an intimate respite from his harried schedule in Paris, where he lives in a 17th-century hôtel particulier. The 40,000 square foot château may not be most anyone’s idea of intimate, but Molyneux succeeded in orchestrating […]

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Folie de Jacques

Posted June 2, 2014. Filed in Chateaux, Follies & Pavilions, Jacques Garcia

Jacques Garcia conceived a fantastical pavilion, true to its origin, in the style of a decorated tent on the grounds of his chateau, Champ de Bataille, in Normandy, France. sometime in the  1990’s, several years after he purchased the expansive property. The English origin of the word pavilion comes from Old French, pavillon, based on […]

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