Category Archives: Pleasure Pavilions

A Man and His Houses, Part III

“October Hill” was collector and art patron Wright Ludington’s third and final home in Montecito. After moving to California in 1915 to attend the Tatcher School in Ojai he would make Montecito, California, his home, eventually inheriting his father’s Spanish-Colonial-style villa in 1926 at the age of 27, which he renamed Val Verde (see A […]

Permalink         Comments (0)        

A Man and His Houses, Part II

For many years I was under the impression that Wright Ludington’s villas Hesperides and October Hill were one and the same. I actually discovered Ludington’s final Montecito residence, October Hill, first in a 1983 issue of House & Garden. It wasn’t until I happened upon posts written years later by The Blue Remembered Hills on […]

Permalink         Comments (2)        

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 […]

Permalink         Comments (1)