Beth Arnold

Letter From Paris: Loving the Luxe Astier de Vilatte

Synchronicity has recently been drawing me to the rue Saint-Honoré.  Isn't it fantastic when life works that way?  When we let ourselves be open enough to follow the leads that come from natural serendipity or a twist of spontaneous fate--when somehow our interests and desires summon the people, places, and experiences that we actually want and even need.

Okay, I didn't really need to find a new favorite shop, but that's the beauty of it.  After a recent delicious lunch at the L'Ardoise Restaurant on rue Mont Thabor, the Lone Wolf, our friend Mario, and I were strolling along famous fashionista rue Saint-Honoré--which has luxe window-shopping--salivating over this and that as our lustful eyes led us along.  (Though let me just state here that I don't care who applauds it, I don't much like boutique Colette.  It's a trendy so-what in my book.)

When we arrived at the door of Astier de Vilatte, Mario said that we had to go in there. It was a French company, an emporium of hand-crafted delight, and we would want to empty the stores shelves into our pockets or load up the nearest truck (something like that).

Letter From Paris: On Location--Galerie Vero-Dodat

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The passages in Paris--think covered arcades--are secret worlds.  One can walk by their metal gates and hardly get a whiff of their existence, unless we catch a glimpse out of the corner of our eyes, stop and stare directly into their galleries of divine mystery.

My favorite, of course, is the Galerie Vivenne on rue Petits Champs, where I love to buy my eyeglasses at TRACTION (look for a blog later on) and much more.

My second favored passage is the chic Galerie Véro-Dodat, connecting rues du Bouloi and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (pictured above), but is most easily spotted from the rue Croix des Petits Champs.  In neoclassical style--with painted ceiling and paneled shop fronts divided by black marble columns--Galerie Véro-Dodat sets a posh tone for the elegant shops within it. 

Galerie Véro-Dodat was built in 1826 and named after its owners, charcutier (butcher) Benoît Véro and a financier called Dodat.  It was a short cut between busy Les Halles and the Palais Royal, and fashionable shoppers and travelers enjoyed its modern conveniences.  Yes, let's call it as we see it--a 19th Century mall.  And let's say what it is today--a beautiful place to window shop or drop some serious cash. 

Last week the windows that caught my eye were at one of my favorite Paris shoe shops--Christian Louboutin:

Christian Louboutin...Stiletto and Lipstick

Letter From Paris: Perfume... Most Parisian of Valentines

Cover of A Natural History of the Senses

Crossposted at HuffPo.com.  Comments not included here.

Smell is a potent wizard that transports us across thousands of miles and all the years we have lived. The odors of fruits waft me to my southern home, to my childhood frolics in the peach orchard. Other odors, instantaneous and fleeting, cause my heart to dilate joyously or contract with remembered grief. Even as I think of smells, my nose is full of scents that start to awake sweet memories of summers gone and ripening fields far away."

                               ---Helen Keller

What are human beings if not a body and mind--physically, materially held together, yet compelled and propelled by our senses? Surely, our first subconscious memories are formed from hearing our mothers' voices and learning to recognize their scents, as they held us close and rocked us to the rhythm of their motherly souls. It was the taste of their milk, the sun that must have been their smiles.

"We live on the leash of our senses," wrote Diane Ackerman, author of the fantastic book A Natural History of the Senses, which is a poetic investigation of these potent qualities of our lives. But it is not just the mere fact that our senses exist--it is their meaning to each and every one of us. We all have our own personal sensuous (and I don't mean sexual) vocabularies. Voices, sights, and aromas are thread through us as near mythical embellishments of our memories, as the Berber woman weaves her own stories in her rugs.

Which sense is the strongest? Which one would you be willing to lose?

*

Letter From Paris: What I Miss in Paris #3

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Back in Paris, I am putting away all the gifts, items, and gadgets I was given and bought in the United States of America for myself and our new apartment.  The unpacking of clothes, mobile office, and miscellaneous toiletries, etc. usually takes me a couple of days.  Yes, I know I'm slow, but I want everything put back in exactly the right place.  Because you see I LOVE to be organized!

Yes, it's true.  It's a handy little obsession of mine, which I've had almost my entire life.  I was president of my student council/student body in high school.  I ran into one of my successors a few years after I'd left, and he told me how well he found all the documentation of my governance and the school's business that I'd handed down to the organization.  Well, I thought, not bad.  You see I want things to be perfectly in place before I start working or doing anything else, and after the pristine beginning, I can mess it all up or turn it around while I know where it is. 

So what do I miss in Paris?  THE CONTAINER STORE!

Paris Art Market Buzz

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11 December 2009

Paris Art Market Buzz

By columnist Paul Paradis, Art Historian, Specialist Consultant in French Furniture and Decorative Arts.

A Scandal

The art world in Paris was shaken by a police raid at the Hôtel Drouot Tuesday of last week.  According to the French press, the office responsible for monitoring illicit trade in cultural artifacts (OCBC) had been observing Drouot for the past ten months based on suspicion that works of art were “disappearing” during inventories and shipments.  The police arrested twelve people on suspicion of organized trafficking of works of art, including one Commissaire Priseur (auctioneer) and 8 members of the union of commissionaires (UCHV), those responsible for moving and storage of the works of art as well as the day to day functioning of the auctions.  One source mentioned that a judge had requested an extension of the usual holding period for several of them.  

The 110 commissionaires are a distinctly French phenomenon, the remnant of the corporatist system established centuries before.  They wear a Mao-like uniform of dark grey with a red collar, each bearing a distinct number.  Sharing equal stakes in the profits of the company, they are all from the Savoie region of France exclusively. (People commonly refer to them as the Savoyards.)   Benefitting from a de facto monopoly since1860, the agents pass down their posts between family members at village level.  They basically run the show at Drouot despite their status as manual support staff, and one has the impression that the auctioneers would prefer not to cross them. 

The Hôtel Drouot, Paris

Letter From Paris: Ferrante Ferranti à l’atelier 7

At the ever chic and evolving l'atelier 7 on Wednesday night, the Lone Wolf and I dropped into a vernissage for the stunning Ferrante Ferranti exhibition. Not only were the photographs we'd come to view breathtakingly sensuous but we were received with the kind of detail that often is missing at Parisian soirées, including a coat valet.  Heaven!

(You must know that this isn't human flesh--but a marble statue.  What an incredible subject and photo.)

Paris Art Market Buzz

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2 December 09

By columnist Paul Paradis, Art Historian, Specialist Consultant in French Furniture and Decorative Arts.

A Rewind

I was so carried away last week with writing about the Yves Saint Laurent sale that I neglected to report on other art market happenings that week.  For example, a highly important collection of arms and military souvenirs from the First Empire period was offered by auctioneer Thierry de Maigret.  The private collection was amassed since 1945 by a Belgian couple offering only their initials of “RVN & GC”.  The presale viewing attracted me immediately while I strolled through the Hôtel Drouot, with its feathered cavalry helmets, gilt and damasked swords, silver epaulettes, molded armory chest plates and other Imperial garb.  Rooms 1 and 7 were adjoined to accommodate the huge group of prestigious lots with the walls covered in a chic steel-blue grey fabric as a backdrop.  The expert for the sale seemed extremely polite and willing to open glass cases for clients so I was able to discreetly glance at some of the swords up close.  The usual frustrating practice at Drouot is to show up from 11:00 to noon the day of the auction and fight for the attention of a representative who opens the case for you, if you’re lucky.    

Although I am not a specialist in this area, it is not difficult to recognize the rich artistry of the craftsmen who lovingly created the ceremonial weapons, providing a lesson in ornament and a myriad of silversmith, goldsmith and damasking techniques.   A ceremonial sword created by the director of the manufacture impériale de Versailles, Nicolas-Noël Boutet that probably belonged to Louis Napoleon Bonaparte (1778-1846), third brother of Napoleon and King of Holland from 1806-1810 (pictured above), was a spectacular example.    

Imperial Sword by N. Boutet, sold for €240, 000. (Photo: Thierry de Maigret)

Letter From Paris: The Church of Saint-Laurent

Crossposted at HuffPo.com. Comments not included here.

Image by lincolnblues via Flickr

If the first sale of the collection of Yves Saint-Laurent and Pierre Bergé roared into Paris like the symbolic lion that Saint-Laurent loved, the second began with the squeak of a mouse at the Theatre Marigny yesterday.  Without the stellar collection of Art Deco furniture and paintings--including Matisses and Picassos--that bidders fought over the last time around, this sale has not generated anything near the heat of the first auction.  The first sale, held at the Grand Palais in February, blew the lid off the art market in Paris as well as around the globe with a total of €373.9 million  or $483.8 million, which according to Christie's was "a world record for the most valuable private collection sold at auction."

As opposed to the people who waited in the rain for hours to view the beloved YSL's collection, there were no lines or waiting and the press gallery was also sparsely attended.  Saint-Laurent's business and life partner, Pierre Bergé, joined the good-looking younger man (Who is he?) seen all around Paris with YSL's beloved dog, Moujik, and others in his firm who were collaborating on the sale with Christie's. 

Letter From Paris: The Imaginarium of The Girlfriend

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On Friday, I met my friend Louise for lunch at the BHV, which is one of my favorite stores in Paris.  You never know what you'll find there, especially in the phantasmagorical hardware department in the basement.  It is a maze of steel, plastic, wire, and LED wonders that I don't know how to use and never knew existed until I discover them as Columbus discovered Havana and said, "I like the rum here. I think I'll stay."  Not to mention that the big secret about BHV's cafeteria is that it has a divine rooftop view of Paris, looking out at the Hotel de Ville and the Pantheon beyond.

I never thought of myself as a hardware person until I started going to this Tool Wonderland in Paris that also must be like falling into Terry Gilliam's mind.  I saw The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus yesterday, and it reminded me that I'd like to meet Gilliam and exchange some brain waves with him.  I like this director's bent style, which echoes my own.  Get thee to a movie theater to see this wondrous film. And, yes, another dwarf is part of the talented cast.  Heath Ledger gives a brilliant performance.  It is a tragedy that it was his last.

Paris Art Market Buzz

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By columnist Paul Paradis, Art Historian, Specialist Consultant in French Furniture and Decorative Arts

12 November 2009

Chicago: A Final Curiosity

Strolling through the hallowed galleries of the Art Institute of Chicago last week, I noticed an arrow pointing down the grand staircase indicating the Thorne Rooms.  Having spent sufficient time in the spectacular French Impressionists wing (collection second only to that in the Musée d’Orsay), I decided to be adventurous and explore.  With only a vague recollection of the Thorne name and expecting to find a couple of reconstituted period rooms with furniture laid out à la Rothschild, I was in for a big surprise.  Instead, there were 68 tiny scale model (one inch to one foot) replicas of period rooms complete with woodwork, moldings, woven rugs, paintings, porcelain and every type of objet d’art belonging to the period in question. 

Mrs. James Ward Thorne (1882-1966), a wealthy Chicago socialite, designed each room herself and hired highly skilled craftspeople to create the pieces of tiny furniture and objects between 1934 and 1940.  An impassioned hobby, albeit eccentric, became her life’s work.   The replicas of French interiors are at times quaintly inaccurate, for example in the Louis XIV (pictured above) salon a copy of a gilt-wood round table with an antique porphyry top conserved in the Louvre is placed in the middle of a living room with a vase of calla lilies (a 20^th century creation) on top as if in a private dwelling of a bourgeois family expecting visitors.  The layout of the room is distinctly un-seventeenth century. However, the technical skill and rigor applied to create the little cozy dioramas are breathtaking.  

French Salon of the Louis XIV Period, 1660-1700, c. 1937 (Photo: Art Institute of Chicago)