March 05, 2020

Rug Inspiration: Pilgrimage to France

Periodically we feature homes, histories, and places which inspire us. Here, we asked our friend, designer Natalie Kotin, to tell us about her recent design-inspired travels. Her words below.

In the Fall of 2018, my husband, a chef, and I, an interior designer, dreamed of moving to France to open a bed and breakfast.  Impractical, I know, but so are California real estate prices and American health care. And so we did it. Well, sort of.  The moving part, at least. We packed up our house in Altadena and moved to France for a year, embarking on a research pilgrimage that would help define our future space.  

Below are some visual lessons we learned, the patterns which ran through the spaces we loved.  We hope to use these lessons to design a BnB that helps folks feel as transported as these environments made us feel, to create our own language that tells a distinct and captivating story.

Consider Every Inch 

An exploration of France’s storied spaces wouldn’t be complete without a stop at Versailles, so that’s where we begin.  Something we take for granted when looking at grand environments is just how meticulous everything really is. We expect it to be, so we aren’t surprised by it.  But it’s worth a minute’s reflection, and has implications for how we might think about design today. Take the Royal Opera at Versailles as our first example. The entire space is made of elm wood, carved and gilded so thoroughly that it creates the illusion of a grandeur far beyond that which is achievable with wood alone.  

Mezzanine seats at the Royal Opera of Versailles

French-style box seats at the Royal Opera of Versailles

Aside from wood, there are a few mirrors in here, and they’re placed in the alcoves of the upper level box seats at a precise angle to perfectly reflect the chandeliers in front of them, giving the illusion that there are lit gallery spaces behind each nook.  It makes the space feel twice as big, and infinitely more magnificent than its small footprint would allow.  

I found another example of coo-coo bananas detailing at Villa Kerylos in Beaulieu-sur-Mer.  The entire space is jaw-dropping, and I talk about it a bit more below, but what’s remarkable is its completeness.   The villa was designed in 1902 by archaeologist-owner Theodore Reinach and his wife Fanny Kann, and in today’s dollars would have cost $120 million to construct.  It is an ode to antiquity, and it is incredible - if you get the opportunity to visit, please do; it’s one of the best places I’ve ever been. From the frescoes to the joinery details to the textiles, it is an exercise in immersive design. 

Fanny Khan’s bedroom on the second floor of Villa Kerylos

The grand salon on the ground floor of Villa Kerylos

Realizing that dining customs in Ancient Greece (i.e., eating with hands) were vastly different from early 20th century French standards, the owner designed cutlery and dinnerware that looked as if they were dug out of the Acropolis, following Grecian motifs found in ancient pottery and frescoes. 

Dinnerware in the dining room of Villa Kerylos

If we extrapolate this, we might ask: what is our narrative, and how can all details, no matter how small, work together to tell it?  

Paint On Patterns

This may sound tacky, but I swear! It’s not gauche, it’s gouache!  This was such a theme, it can’t be wrong. At Villa Kerylos, almost every beam was covered in stunning patterns and vivid scenery. 

Artwork painted on the beams and plaster in the library of Villa kerylos

Painted frescoes and beams of the main entry to Villa Kerylos

At Chateau de Brissac in the Loire Valley, the shutters were painted in warm rusty hues and charming floral motifs.  

Painted interior shutters in one of the ballrooms at Chateau de Brissac

The upper levels at Chenonceau got the royal rusty paint treatment, too, and paint was used almost everywhere - in both public and private spaces from Fontaibleau to Versailles - to mimic stone and wood.  Paint was used alongside tapestries and artwork and mosaics and stones, not instead of them.  More was more. We sometimes think of paint as a one-trick solution.  Same with wallpaper. But these spaces helped me to realize the power of the painted expression - as a form of artwork whose patterning can compliment the fabrics and finishes we put next to it.  It doesn’t have to be solid, it doesn’t have to be timeless, it just has to be intentional. 

Artwork, Everywhere

At Giverny, Monet blocked off his bathroom door with art.  

The upstairs salle de bain at Giverny

I guess when you’re Monet, a painting is easier to come by than a lock.  But what charm! His house was worth the trek on a cold October morning, not for the gardens or even the oft-photographed kitchen, groovy as they may be.  But the living spaces he created were some of the most inviting environments we visited.  

The salon at Giverny

Subtle patterns on the upholstery and rugs complimented gallery walls exploding with framed artwork in the living spaces, bedrooms, and yes, bathrooms, too.  The garden outside was brought inside in paintings and on fabrics, and layers upon layers mimicked the richness of the planted environment beyond. It wasn’t either, or. It was both, and.   

No Such Thing As Neutral

Consider this the intermission. 

I wouldn’t be the first to tell you that we’re living in dualistic times. In design, the maximalist World of Interiors is enjoying cult success in the face of Apple stores and smart homes. It doesn’t take a sociologist to understand why we crave the richness of nostalgia in the face of modernization and automation. I sure do. Exhibits A, B, C, and D above. But seeing some ‘neutral’ historic spaces that informed the modern canon helped me understand that the spaces we love for their perceived neutrality were never really that neutral to begin with.  

We can trace architectural modernity to thought leaders in the early 20thC like Adolf Loos, who wrote Ornament and Crime in 1908.  But even the eschewer-in-chief of decoration himself could not escape the overtly decorative nature of the materials he used. His spaces were filled with natural materials like limestones and marbles, plasters and concrete, all containing a depth and richness that connected with dwellers on a human level.  

We noticed similar spaces that were described as ‘neutral’ on our research pilgrimage.  In the ‘modern’ ballroom at Chenonceau, dating back to 1513, limestone walls were complemented by whitewashed wooden beams and Nero Marquina checkered floors.  The perceived neutrality here belied a richness of texture and depth. 

The ballroom at Chenonceau

The back-of-house spaces at Versailles, where decoration was all but absent, boasted warm plasters and rich woods, and a closer look at the ancillary bedroom spaces at Chambord revealed white walls that weren’t so white after all, but papered in tonal damask wallcovering.  

A back of house landing in the Louis XV apartments of Versailles 

A secondary bedroom at Chambord 

The ‘modern’ entryway at Fontainbleau, a precursor in many ways to 20thC spaces like Villa Muller by Loos, is clad in five different types of marble, and the similarly marbled lower-level staircases and war rooms at Versailles show the warmth and richness of natural stone, even amidst all their symmetry. 

An entry stair at Fontainbleau

 
Villa Muller by Adolf Loos in Prague, 1930

A stairwell leading to Louis XV’s quarters at Versailles

This is to say - screw neutrality!  It never really existed, anyway. And in that, another lesson for today - that the chasm between less and more can’t be too vast when the good version of less is born from more. 

Red Is A Powerful Color

And now, a cheap trick.  Background - I have a fraught relationship with the color red.  It can feel a bit too bold, a bit too aggressive for my California sensibilities.  But in many of the spaces that took my breath away, and made me feel transported to another time and place, it was the common denominator.  Not the fire-engine red of my nightmares, but a softer, deeper hue closer to rusted brick. It’s a trendy color now, but perhaps for good reason.  

In the living spaces at Maison de Lucie, a townhouse turned BnB in the seaside town of Honfleur, if it wasn’t clad in wood, it was upholstered in rouge.  The effect was a richness of space that enveloped and comforted.  

The living room at Maison de Lucie in Honfleur

The grand ballroom at Chateau de Brissac was similarly rusty.  The walls were upholstered in textural red damask, and alcoves painted to match.  With the terracotta floors below and a rich wood ceiling above, I stood in the middle and imagined how romantic it must have felt to dance and mingle under the candlelit chandeliers. 

The grand ballroom of Chateau de Brissac

Perhaps it is a cheap trick, but the immersive quality of this particular shade of red helped us lose ourselves in the splendor of these environments. 

Light: It Can’t Be Warm Enough

A lampshade and a candle go a long way.  That’s really all I have to say on that front.  For more, ask a Dane. 

Designing For All The Senses

At the end of the day, I think we’re drawn to these warm, glowing spaces because it strikes at something primal.  At Chenonceau, you enter in front of a roaring fireplace that is so big it seems to belong to a Cheesecake Factory and not to France.  At Maison de Lucie in Honfleur, the fireplace stays lit from morning to night. Not advocating for that (climate change), but I am advocating for designing for the senses.  

Like Juhani Pallasmaa writes in The Eyes of the Skin, “instead of mere vision, architecture involves several realms of sensory experience which interact and fuse into each other,” and it’s the task of the designer to invoke as many of them as possible in designing a holistic environment.  At Villa Kerylos, the sound of waves crashing against the rocks locates you in a fantasy land of Greco-Roman wonder. Not just sight, but smell, touch, sound and taste all play a role in our experience of space, as they did there.  

When we look with our eyes, we are often using sight to recall touch, and so a space feels cold or warm, comfortable or constricted because of how we imagine it might feel.  At Hôtel Le Sénéchal on Île de Re, we all but leapt into our giant pillow bed, not because we were tired but because of how we dreamt it might feel. The scent of burning embers meeting foggy salt air as we opened the windows in the morning is forever embedded in our memory of that place.  

Guest suite at Hôtel Le Sénéchal in Ars-en-Ré

 

Guest suite at Hôtel Le Sénéchal in Ars-en-Ré

The cliché sounds of the four piece band on the terrace of the Bastide de Gordes, the scent of bergamot and tobacco at l’Officine Universelle Buly on Rue Saintonge, the briny taste of oysters under a wood-framed tent in the Golfe du Morbihan - these are the experiences we will take with us, that we will try to recreate, and that we hope to add to with new adventures and new traditions.  Whatever we design, wherever it may be, may it invoke the use of all our senses, all splendidly ablaze at once. 

***

Through pattern, color, light, and sense, I know that one day we’ll make a space that tells the story of us.  It won’t be neutral, because it can’t be, and it will be complete, because it must be.   

Thanks for following along.  

- Natalie Kotin