Life after Castaing: Chez Harry Heissmann

Harry Heissmann's living room, featuring a pair of Castaing brackets, photo by Russell Gera

Madeleine Castaing didn't buy Important or Fine French Furniture, but rather what charmed her.  This pair of brackets in the form of tree branches captured her fancy and found a home at her fairy-tale Leves.  Years later when her estate was sold off, they also captured dashing designer Harry Heissmann's and here they are in installed today in his Brooklyn Heights flat. (That he lives in the most fabulous neighborhood in the city is enough evidence of his excellent taste to my mind; Harry also spent years working for the master of the refined, Albert Hadley.)

another view, photo by Russell Gera

Madeleine's quirky side would no doubt have found his snail table very amusing. 

As installed by Madeleine in the dining room of Leves - do you think the plant is plastic? I do.

Many thanks to Harry for giving us a glimpse into his personal world.  And another big thank you to Habitually Chic for including MC and EEE in her Fall Book Brigade.

The House that Pleasure Built

Mlle Dervieux's boudoir

For as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated by that singularly glamorous creature, the Courtesan.  Living outside of society's constraints and approval, hers was a life dedicated to mastering the art of pleasure in all its forms - intellectual and sensual.  

It was a job requirement to be dressed fashionably and sumptuously and her quarters, as an extension of her person, were just as exquisitely equipped.  The Opera dancer Anne-Victoire Dervieux (1752 - 1826) was one such mistress who was so passionate about her Paris neoclassical hotel particulier that she eventually married her architect François-Joseph Bélanger.* 

The house on the rue Chantereine (now the rue de la Victoire) was fabled for its elegance.  The Baronne d'Oberkirch was one of the many who toured it - while its mistress was out, of course - and described it in her memoirs: "It was a gem.  The furniture alone was worth a king's ransom.  Both court and city had contributed to its decoration."

The two story house was first constructed by Alexandre Brongniart, but was redesigned by Belanger in 1788 in the latest Pompeian taste.

The brothers Goncourt called it the most splendid of the small-scale hotels, "with its bathroom in the Etruscan fashion, the dining room preciously worked with silver arabesques, painted figures, and mahogany and lemon wood married together."  Most petites maisons were sited on the outskirts of Paris where men could engage in all sorts of unsavory pursuits away from society.  If interested, I highly recommend the 18th century novel La Petite Maison which narrates the seduction of a young woman through the architectural delights of a maison de plaisance.

 

Belanger was at the forefront of French neoclassicism which drew upon the arabesque decoration found in the Ancient Roman murals in Pompeii.  (Compare with his British contemporary Robert Adam who was similarly influenced.)

A rare exhibition of 20 watercolor designs was recently on view at Didier Aaron in London.  My dear friend Marc sent me a few images from the show, which I hope some of you had the good fortune to see.  For more, click here.

One of Belanger's most important clients was the Comte d'Artois who, surely no coincidence, was one of Dervieux's supporters.  I couldn't help but include Belanger's charming design for the comte's bedroom at the chateau de Bagatelle in the Bois du Boulogne.

*Dervieux was imprisoned during the French Revolution and her marriage to Belanger afterwards is said to have been more of convenience than of a shared passion enflamed over boiserie and mantelpieces.  Oh well.  The house was later inhabited by another lady of style, Hortense Bonaparte.  Click here to see Dervieux's boudoir in miniature.

For more reading pleasure, curl up with Katie Hickman's Courtesans: Money, Sex and Fame in the Nineteenth Century and Mistresses: True Stories of Seduction Power and Ambition by Leigh Eduardo.  Of course, I am always looking to expand my library on licentious ladies, if you have any suggestions....

Rethinking Puppy Love

The same week Dog House, Carol Prisant's charming tale of "One Love, Ten Dogs, and a Forty-Two-Year Marriage" landed on my reading table, the article "What pets can teach us about marriage" arrived in my inbox courtesy of Mr. EEE. Clearly forces greater than I - forces that maybe had overheard me telling friends that I needed to get home to my little furry guys, and, oh yeah, my husband - were at work.

As the article pointed out, I am indeed more likely to forgive Gus in a heartbeat when he breaks heirloom porcelain boxes or Stubby when he shreds the velvet sofa, than a human - or, more specifically, the one I've pledged to honor in sickness and in health until death. This illuminating insight reminded me of how it's all too easy to take our most beloved for granted.

Ms. Prisant's book which examines love and loss with humor, tenderness and a disarming candor reinforced this a thousand fold. While Jack Russells, lurchers, and greyhounds come, go, and stay, Dog House is the story of how she and her husband Millard pursued their life together full of dogs (naturally), restoring old houses, nurturing rose bushes, and ultimately how they faced her husband's cancer to which he succumbed in 2000. Prisant bravely lets us in to her grief and gradual healing, an inspiring reminder of how resilient the human spirit is.

The author and her two dogs

If "'Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all" as Tennyson wrote, than it is also better to appreciate and delight in love's presence as much as one will lament its absence. Prisant's Dog House glows with warmth, laughter and sweetness - which is exactly how every home - dog, cat, or bird - should be.

Top photo: Mona Williams with her terrier, captured by Cecil Beaton

Castaing Outtake: Nina and Robert Ricci on the Champ de Mars

While scouring French decor magazines from the 1950s and '60s, I came across a feature on the first lady of couture Nina Ricci's Paris flat. There was no mention of Castaing, but the print on the walls (which you will see A LOT of in the book) and the pink striped tenting of the entrance, below, made me pause.

Castaing's grandson Frédéric confirmed that the Riccis had indeed been clients and so here for your pleasure are the photos which sadly didn't make the final cut. Nina was well into her seventies and had already set aside the reins of her maison de couture when this was published in 1961. However there are several touches which speak to the client's fashion background which veer from the classic Castaing canon, such as the abundant use of silks, grey carpeting, and general restrained use of patterns.

A mahogany bookcase and writing table cut a bold profile against the grey walls and black-bordered white carpeting in Robert’s masculine study.

In contrast to Robert’s sleek space, Nina’s bedroom was layered with flowers, books, and her collection of glass. The carpeting is mouse grey over which is layered an "Eastern" carpet which MC expressly disliked. Love that long fringe!

All photos from Art et Décoration, April 1961

The Death of the Front Door

Would you plunk down hard-earned money to go to a spa that made you enter through the kitchen? If one's home is one's sanctuary, then shouldn't the experience of entering it be given just as much thought and sense of ceremony? As more of us use the side or back door, chances are we are first greeted by "unprepossessing garage passages or dreary mud rooms, " to borrow Toby Worthington's succinct words.

It probably started out of convenience (or laziness as my more exacting readership may have it). With arms full of groceries or dry cleaning, why walk around to the front? No doubt the attached garage is also an accessory to the crime. But while service entrances are useful and practical, we have become so used to exiting and entering through them that the front door has become almost totally irrelevant. This really struck Mr. EEE and me when his sister reconfigured her property so that the driveway circled around the back of the house leaving the front door completely marooned without even a path leading up to it.

As the astute Mr. Worthington continues: "Think of Don Draper coming home every evening (well, almost every evening) through that mean little back hall and having to put his hat down on the nearest available surface. We've not gone much beyond that, it seems to me."

Mr. Worthington's comment goes to the heart of the matter. Sure, houses and their usage should adapt to modern life, BUT if side entrances are the new way of life, then houses should be reconfigured to accommodate and enhance this shift. When my students and I look at domestic interiors through the ages, one of most important things we examine are floor plans. Much thought was put into how rooms were arranged to maximize use and enjoyment of a space.

For centuries, many cultures have believed in the importance of providing a transition from the hurly burly of the street to the inner sanctum of the house. In the Ancient Roman house, there are actually two zones one walks through before entering an inner courtyard: the vestibulum and the fauces.
This is why our houses have foyers and entrance halls, which now languish unused and have become dead space. By entering into the kitchen or another random area of the house, we lose the physical (and mental) shift from our public life to our private one, where we set aside our workaday worries and embrace the joys and comforts of the home.

Top photo of 10 Downing Street from number10.gov.uk