Category Archives: The Collectors

The Despont Difference

Posted January 22, 2016. Filed in 1920's-1930's Style, Classical Moderne, Clubby, The Aesthetes, The Collectors, Thierry Despont

Architect and decorator Thierry Despont is finally getting his due. Or, perhaps, it’s just a case of a passionate aesthete doing his life’s work happily without much fanfare. Whatever the case, I have long admired his work but remain dismayed by lack of accessibility to his near-forty year ouvre. Even his own website has little […]

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Timeless Chic at Clos Videlot

Posted June 8, 2015. Filed in Chateaux, Classical Moderne, Moderne, Salon Style, The Collectors, Villas

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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Sir John Richardson’s Palladian-Style Villa in Connecticut

Posted October 8, 2014. Filed in English Country House Style, English Style Eclecticism, John Richardson, The Collectors

Two Dutch landscapes attributed to Van Styr light up the dark green flocked walls of the oval living room. A Directoire billiards-table lamp hangs over the table and a pair of large 18th-century English brass urns stand in front of the Regency gilt sofa. Not long after Sir John Richardson, the inveterate collector and foremost […]

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John Richardson: New York, 1985

Posted October 7, 2014. Filed in English Style Eclecticism, John Richardson, The Collectors

John Richardson sitting on the fireplace club fender in the living room of his New York brownstone apartment as photographed by Derry Moore in 1986. Much has been written lately about Sir John Richardson, the nonagenarian British art historian and foremost Picasso biographer. The New York Times blog, T Magazine, recently interviewed him at his Connecticut […]

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Nouveau Classique

Posted July 22, 2014. Filed in Boho Chic, French Eclecticism, Haute Boheme, Pierre Passebon, The Collectors

When Florence Grinda, Director of Development of European Affairs at Sotheby’s, went looking for a  new Paris pied-a-terre she called upon her longtime friend Pierre Passebon, the famous antiquaire and art collector, who has collaborated on several of his own residences with interior designer Jacques Grange. Passebon found the apartment close to the Esplanade des […]

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One Singular Sensation

Posted April 21, 2014. Filed in 19th-Century-Style Eclecticism, The Collectors

With great consideration I’ve made the decision to alter the format of future posts. Due to the exorbitant number of hours I dedicate to producing one article – the research, scanning of images, and writing involved – I have decided instead to dedicate each post to one sublime and inspiring room, as the title of […]

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Cabinet of Wonder – Part V

Posted April 21, 2013. Filed in 19th-Century-Style Eclecticism, Romantic Classical Style, Studio Peregalli, The Collectors
Umberto Pasti's Milan Living Room

Often we sense or know when something is amiss. Sometimes it is a gut reaction, or intuition if you will. Other times the signs are there before us, but we choose not to notice them, or we put them off to a time in the future when we can better address them. Umberto Pasti knew […]

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Cabinet of Wonder – Part III

Posted March 28, 2013. Filed in English Style Eclecticism, Romantic Classical Style, The Collectors

One of London’s leading dealers of garden and antique furniture opened the doors to his private inner sanctum for The World of Interiors in 1994. Peter Hone’s London flat in Ladbroke Square is a pantheon to classical ornamentation in the spirit of collector and antiquaire Sir John Soane. Walls and every surface bear the owner’s […]

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Cabinet of Wonder – Part II

Posted March 17, 2013. Filed in English Style Eclecticism, Orientalism, The Collectors

In the previous post, Cabinet of Wonder, we visited Malplaquet House, the eccentric Renaissance-inspired London home of collectors Tim Knox and Todd Longstaffe-Gowan. In the second of five installments addressing modern day cabinets of wonder we visit the London flat of antique dealer Peter Hinwood, where English nineteenth-century-style eclecticism informs the decor and broad range […]

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Cabinet of Wonder

Posted March 15, 2013. Filed in Malplaquet House, The Collectors

The present-day rooms featured in this post originate from an age-old tradition of collecting reminiscent of history’s great antiquarians. Tracing back to the Renaissance, the cabinet of curiosities was an encyclopedic collection of types of objects which categorically had yet been defined. They have been referred to by various names, such as Cabinet of Wonder, […]

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