Paris drawing room by Renzo Mongiardino: Watercolor by Mark Hampton

Axel Vervvoordt's Timeless Interiors: Inevitable collector's item

White parchment sleigh bed attributed to Jean Michel Frank.

I get really emotional over the work of mid-century French designer and decorator Jean Michel Frank. He is the one visual stylist who managed to conclusively solve the conflict between modern design's fetish for reduction and the very human need for comfort and luxury in a room. Here's a man who could make a masterpiece out of varying tones of beige and his use of unconventional materials like straw marquetry and shagreen in unmatched in its perverse sense of what was and what was not luxury. What Coco Chanel did to women's clothing Frank did to rooms..that is..pared them down to chicest proposition of silhouette and finish possible.
As Eve M Kahn once wrote , "Frank would wrap spindly, minimalist tables or chairs in rarefied materials—goatskin, vellum, glittery mica—to look modern, but not icily clinical. Or he’d update demure traditional forms, fashioning turned legs and flared arms out of peasanty sandblasted oak or iron with upholstery as rough as dishtowels."
Pierre-Emmanuel Martin-Vivier has written an amazing book on this icon titled, "Jean-Michel Frank: L’étrange Luxe du Rien "(The Strange Luxury of Nothingness). This expression is one I absolutely love , though it sounds far more expensive in French.
The most exciting news is Frank's work still occasionally comes up for auction, since he tended to custom design pieces of furniture for the rooms his clients commissioned. Of course because he would use Hermes for his leather covered tables and upholstery and did lamps with the likes of Giacometti, let's just say prices are prohibitive. With Frank in mind I will endeavor to embrace the beige. It was the only tonality he could accept as a color.

John Fowler: Prince Of Decorators: Martin Wood

The Dining Room Of Chateau Solevig from Jansen: Acanthus Press

Maison Jansen was just about the most haute of Paris based decorating housing in the 20th century with a client list that ranged from the Duke and Duchess Of Windsor to the President and Mrs. John F Kennedy to the Shah of Iran. And obviously if you were a client of theirs, your decorating budget tended to be on the far end of the no-limit scale with awe inducing spectacle a key ideal for your interiors. So what's modern or relevant about that? The work of Gaston Schwartz who became the President of Jansen in1928 is . He's the one responsible for the decoration of that eccentric concept: a modern country house reveling in Arte Moderne glamour.
The house in question, Chateau Solveig in Switzerland looms incongrously in Jansen oevure in that it departs radically from the firm's solidly traditional aesthetic. Chateau Solevig's interior is a beautifully contained exploration of what was then modern, played out in decadently luxurious materials. There was tons of mirrored glass veneering, a dramatic foyer in matching bronze panels and a three story central staircase of white marble with hand railings and balusters of clear crystal.