La Cornue by Martyn Lawrence Bullard

Celebrity interior designer Martyn Lawrence Bullard has collaborated with La Cornue, the venerable French company making high quality ranges since 1908, to create ten new colors in their Château series based on high performance race cars.

Bullard says, "The colors I chose for the collection, apart from being iconic racing car colors, are colors that bring such personality to a space. Color is really something that we can use to show our personalities in our interiors. So, for me, everything from our beautiful deep black, to our rich and sexy oranges and reds, are all colors that are so vibrant and so full of expression and personality. It adds such excitement into a kitchen in a way we haven't seen before."

I can see these working really well in kitchens of many different styles. The colors allow for varied directions of feeling and expression in a home remodel.

Happy designing!

An English-French Manor-Style Remodel by Fiorito Interior Design

It is sometimes a surprise what beauty can lurk under the surface of a room. A client with a 1970s kitchen and eat-in area cut up by an unwieldy peninsula was desperate for it to reflect her love of all things English-and-French-Manor-Home.

Working closely with my client, we removed the peninsula in favor of a lovely free-standing island that we painted a shade of French Blue. This is topped with Old World sink hardware (note the ceramic HOT and COLD medallions on the faucets!) and a gorgeous marble counter with a very special edge profile that evokes an antique French Boulangerie counter from the 1910s. Pendants with patinaed metal shades over the island further the charming Old World feel. Handmade white and blue tiles laid in a quilted diamond pattern cover the backsplash, and the remainder of the cabinetry at the perimeter is in a warm cream tone.

The eat-in area near the fireplace got a cozy treatment with custom seat cushions and window seat bench cushions in a classic blue-and-white Toile de Jouy matching the island stools.

The nearby living room got a similar treatment. We removed dark wood paneling and dark carpeting in favor of a light sky blue wall and lighter wood flooring. A new rug with the appearance of an heirloom, a new grand-scaled sofa, and some of my client’s precious antiques helped take the room from 70s rec room to English Sitting Room.

All photos by Bernardo Grijalva.

Happy designing!

History of Furniture: Empire

As we have seen over the last many posts in this ongoing series of The History of Furniture, no style or movement or shape happens in a vacuum. Everything in the decorative arts springs from a milieu...that is a very specific time and place that gives birth to something representative of that period: politically, socially, scientifically, and economically.

And this installment is a great example of this principle. The Empire style (pronounced ahm--PEER, as it is in French) is a product of layers of social and political upheaval that came right before it. After years of the excesses of late Baroque, King Louis XVI and the aristocracy were overthrown in the French Revolution. However, the Revolution was not a single event, but a series of events that took place over many years. Once the monarchy was no longer in power, the French First Republic was created, overseen by a five member committee called the Directory.

The style of decorative arts--including architecture, interiors, clothing, and painting--during this period is called Directoire which I wrote about in this post.

But the rise of Napoleon I and his power led to a coup d'etat which abolished the Directory. Napoleon then created the Consulate, and after enduring several years of counter-plots and assassination attempts, he created an imperial system of government based on the ancient Roman model.

And this is where the Empire style grew from...the Directoire style already borrowed classical silhouettes and motifs from ancient Rome (who had stolen their style from the ancient Greeks before them), and since Napoleon I was now Emperor, France dove head-first into ostentatious pomp. Self-aggrandizing Napoleon saw himself as a Caesar, and everything produced in France at that time was meant to idealize Napoleon's leadership and the French state.

And perhaps no other location exemplifies this better than Chateau de Malmaison, the residence of Emperor Napoleon I and Empress Josephine and the seat of the French government from 1800 to 1802. Located nearly 10 miles west of the center of Paris in Rueil-Malmaison, the chateau is full of the kind of Neoclassical bluster that inflated Napoleon's view of himself. Just take a look at this portrait by Ingres, Napoleon On His Imperial Throne.

Napoleon's bedroom is draped in fabric to recall the kind of tent he would have lived in during his war campaigns.

But Josephine's bedroom was even more resplendent, with a red and gold scheme and again, the tent-like structure but this one held aloft by Corinthian columns. Also note the swans, eagles, and sphinxes which reference ancient Roman design.

The Council Chamber at Malmaison also looks like a tent, draped in striped fabric used in actual campaigns. The entry doors are painted with trompe-l'œil trophies (gatherings of swords and helmets suspended by a cord) of war and topped with the Imperial Roman eagle. Notice the X-shaped stools based on the ancient Roman curule seat.

Here is an ancient Roman coin showing Emperor Tiberius seated on a curule seat!

And the library at Malmaison, featuring teak woodwork and a ceiling painted after the frescoes of Pompeii, held over 13,000 books in 1814.

You can take a marvelous virtual tour of the Chateau de Malmaison through the official website.

Happy designing!

Know Your Chairs: The Ribbon Chair

Since we just looked at French designer Pierre Paulin's Elysee sofa last month for the Know Your Sofas series here, let's look at his iconic Ribbon Chair.

The Ribbon Chair and accompanying ottoman were created in 1966 by Paulin and made from a metal frame with horizontal springs, covered with foam and stretch fabric. One look at the geometry and you can see why it is called the Ribbon Chair as it is a continuous run of a single narrow plane, indented to create the back.

And like so many modernist pieces, they work well with contemporary, transitional, or traditional elements.

The chair is also a television and film star in its own right, featuring heavily in the 1970s British sci-fi series "Space: 1999" (along with a slew of other iconic furniture pieces and lighting by Artemide). You can see it prominently below in the first still from the show, as well as peeking out from behind show star Martin Landau in the second image...

...and we just recently saw it in last year's extraordinary "Blade Runner 2049" too!

This amazing chair is still in production and available through Artifort.

Happy designing!

Know Your Sofas: Pierre Paulin's Élysée Sofa

French furniture and industrial designer Pierre Paulin did not get off to an auspicious start: after failing his Baccalauréat (the end of high school exams that determine whether or not a student goes on to university studies), he trained as a ceramist in Vallaurius and then as a stone-carver in Burgundy. But when he got into a fight that injured his right arm, his dreams of being a sculptor came to an end. Yet he found himself later working at Gascoin, then Thonet (previously here) and then Artifort where he gained international fame for the creation of his Mushroom chair in 1960 and his Ribbon chair in 1966 (this will be featured later in an installation of Know Your Chairs).

Then in 1969, he was commissioned by Jean Coural, head of the Mobilier National, an agency of the French Ministry of Culture, to redesign four rooms in President Georges Pompidou’s private apartment in the Élysée Palace. Paulin proceeded to cover the Napoléon III giltwood-paneled walls entirely in beige fabric and bring in newly designed pouf-style sofas and chairs, which became known as the Élysée collection. The sofas and chairs were molded from strips of wood wrapped in foam and upholstered in leather.

The sofa, alternatively called the Pumpkin (look at the shape) or the Alpha (after the Alpha manufacturing company that made the originals), was in brief production until 1973 but did not really gain a cult following until the early 2000s. The rarity of the originals makes them highly sought after for high price tags, but fear not, Ralph Pucci has brought the Alpha sofa back into production!

Happy designing!

History of Furniture: Directoire

I am not presenting my recurring History of Furniture postings in any chronological order, so we are free to explore styles and silhouettes without any time frame. So let's put the needle down (a reference to vinyl records that some younger readers might not appreciate) right after the three Louis of France--especially Louis XVI (previously here)--and the subsequent French Revolution. After Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were executed, France was governed by what was called the Directoire Executif (this executive directory was a five-member committee which governed the country from 1795 until it was overthrown by Napoleon Bonaparte on 9 November 1799). Therefore, this period--the last four years of the French Revolution--was known as Directoire. It was a time of great social and economic upheaval and uncertainty.

So what could this mean in terms of furniture and furnishings? Well, as is the case with most styles, "movements," and periods of history, there is rarely a clean break with what came before and what comes after. The past always has an influence and the Neoclassical structures, motifs, and lines from Louis XVI were still present in Directoire furniture but without the pomp and regality (after all, the French Revolution was all about ridding the country of monarchs and aristocrats). Pieces featured sparse carving and ornamentation, and were no longer made of exotic imported woods like rosewood and mahogany but local European woods like walnut, elm, or beech.

One of the "inventions" of the time was the bouillotte (BOO-yacht) lamp, a special fixture having two or three or even four candle arms and covered with a shade. Mostly made of tôle (painted metal) with a reflective interior, the shades could be lowered down on a shaft as the candles burned down, thus shielding a person from direct glare from the flame. The reflective interior served to amplify the light but also cast it downward onto a surface such a writing desk or a card table. In fact, the word bouillotte comes from the name of a French gambling card game that was an ancestor to modern poker!

But certainly the most iconic piece of furniture from the Directoire period is a day bed featuring ends of equal heights and a Neoclassical silhouette very much influenced by the excavations of Pompeii and Herculaneum several decades earlier. Once the painter Jacques-Louis David created his image Portrait of Madame Récamier, a painting showing socialite Juliette Récamier (do read about her fascinating life here) reclining barefoot and dressed in a Greco-Roman style gown on one such day bed, the furniture piece from then on was known as a récamier (reh-calm-ee-AY). It still goes by that name today. (Take a look at a past posting here where I covered fashion designer Rick Owens and his furniture pieces--he created a récamier in a modern vernacular.)

Happy designing!