Modern Furniture rooted in the Classic

 Eileen Gray's bibendum chair

As a designer I appreciate all kinds of furniture from very traditional to modern and contemporary ones.  My lovely mother-in-law, whose taste is more contemporary, once told me "you don't like modern" and my response was "I like modern furniture with classical reference."
We find comfort in what we know and/or we can relate to, so these types of furniture which are modern but have been around for over half a century are the kinds that offer an incredible balance between tradition and modern.  Here are my absolute favorites.  Enjoy!

 Le Corbusier chaise lounge.

 Le Corbusier arm chair

 Saarinen Executive side chair

 Bertoia side chair

 Mies Van Der Rohe

Hans Wegner

Eames side chairs

Georgian Houses by Vyna St. Phard

 

Today I have the great pleasure of introduce you to Vyna St. Phard the mind behind High End Weekly, a blog dedicated to the highest standards of luxury lifestyle.  Vyna is a New York-based interior designer who draws her inspiration from culture, fashion, art, travel and nature.  Her aesthetic style is greatly influenced by the Art Deco style and Bauhaus movement.  Her daily posts cover everything from, of course, Art Deco, the luxury market, and lifestyle blogging.  Raised between Paris and New York she speaks perfect French and what I love more about Vyna is her bonne vivante personality and how easy going she is.  I asked Vyna to contribute to Belle Vivir and share with my lovely readers some of her extended knowledge.  Thank you Vyna for accepting.

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When my friend and fellow designer Julie asked me to do a blog post on Belle Vivir, I was thrilled to accept and be part of all the excitements and inspirations she create every day on this blog. I hope you too get inspired by these beautiful georgian houses because they have long been cherished, and stand as exemplary homes of long ago and a perfect standard for progressive architecture of the future.

It's all in the details

Here's a quick rundown of the history of Georgian Houses. They were built in a style that was popular in England from roughly 1715 to 1830, during the reigns of the four King George. The Georgian style homes are noteworthy for their distinctive appearances and for the influence they still have on modern building styles which is why I'm especially fond of them.

Stella McCartney's England country side home.

Classic example of an early Georgian House

Georgian Presidential House, circa 1733, via History Org

Fun Fact: Did you know that this house (above) in Colonial Williamsburg served as a home for various presidents from the University of William & Mary? All but one president of the 300-year-old college lived in brick Georgian homes. Who what the odd man out?

CHARACTERISTICS

OF THE GEORGEAN HOUSES

• A square, symmetrical layout.
• A row of horizontal, evenly spaced sash windows on each floor of the home.
• Early Georgian homes had sash windows.The principal of the double-hung sash, with pulleys and counterweights in sash-boxes, remained unchanged, even in modern times. The same goes for the arrangements of internal folding shutters.

• Fun Fact: Did you know that this house in Colonial Williamsburg served as a home for various presidents from the University of William & Mary? All but one president of the 300-year-old college lived in brick Georgian homes. Who what the odd man out?

• The average Georgian house had 2 to 3 stories, with a chimney on each end of the house.
• The traditional number of windows is five on the upper floors, often with a Palladian window in the center over the door.
• The above pictured doors are early examples of Georgian designs from William Salmon's Palladio Londiniensis of 1734. It has a sober Doric doorcase and an enriched Corinthian doorcase.

 

Tory Burch's South Hampton home via Vogue

• Georgian houses are known for their large paneled door, usually topped off with a pediment or arch. The doorway is also often framed by pedestals or columns.
• Georgian doors are tall, often filling the entire opening, but have often been cut down later to accommodate a fanlight. Front doors were painted in dark colors or grained to imitate wood.

• Fashionable homes have a main staircase and a secondary "backstairs" for servants.
• Ordinary homes have one wooden staircase of straight flights joined by landings, or winding flight for each story.
• You will most likely find the most elaborate decoration on the main flight from the entrance hall to the floor above.
• In late Georgian homes, staircases were made of wood, and were now open-string, with a stepped profile rather than a straight one.

A couple of years back, I toured a few Georgian houses, while my girlfriends and I were in the UK. This was way before I met my husband Michael, who happens to be British. Michael later told me that as a young man, he rented an apartment which was in a Georgian house. How delightful it must have been to live in such a stately house, I thought! These types of homes evoke lighthearted emotions, and I sometimes image Virginia Woolf slowly walking through such house, as she meditated on the characters for her novels. By the way, did she ever live in a Georgian house? As for me, I can easily imagine renovating one, and decorating it in a modern style. Perhaps I will forgo the renovation and live well enough alone (provided that the plumbing is working, of course). Even though I consider myself a modernist, I have a soft spot for Georgian houses, because they hold this timeless appeal, and boast an elegance which is hard to find in modern architecture.

Contributed by Vyna St Phard for Belle Vivir

The Time of Elegance: Jardin à la Française

Chateau Vaux le Vicomte

Jardin à la Française is a garden design based on harmony and balance born during The Late  Renaissance in France.  There is one French Landscape Architect named Andre Le Nôtre who has received all the credit for The French Formal Garden.  He got the accolade after he was responsible for the transformation of the gardens of The Castle of Vaux le Vicomte, which after that became to be one of the most spectacular Chateau in France of its time.  This Garden design has its origins in Italy during the Renaissance revival.  Andre Le Notre is also responsible for the famous The Petit Trianon's garden which he designed while working at gardens of Palace of Versailles, the beginning of what is today The Avenue des Champs-Élysées, Chateau Fontainebleau and many other spectacular gardens not only in France but also in England, Italy and Germany.  The Jardin à la Française style combines the use of parterrre or bed of greens in geometric shapes divided by gravel walkways, topiaries, fountains or pools in symmetrical patterns in an attempt to create a perfect integration to the Architecture of the Chateaus resulting in a perfect perspective view from miles away.

Palace The Versailles

Petit Trianon

Below, modern versions of Gardens based on Jandins a la Francaise style.

Below, Oscar de la Renta's famous garden.

images via Vaux le Vicomte, Palace of Versailles, How do I love theestyle, Vanity Fair,

Aynhoe Park

Who ever tells you is a collector, send him/her here or better yet let's redirect them here, to see the the world's largest collection of plaster casts, many of which were formerly sold off by the Metropolitan Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.  James Perkins, event organizer and property developer is the owner of the restored Aynhoe Park which is full all kinds of Architectural fragments you can possibly imagine from capital columns, huge rosettes adorning the walls, statues, busts, corbels, brackets, pilasters and you name it.   Stuffed animals sit on tables or stand on floors.  The impressive country house in the Oxfordshire countryside of England dates from the 17th Century and it's furnished with a mixed of sculptural contemporary and traditional furniture.  The detail of the disco balls hanging in the orangery, which looks almost like a museum, is a completely unexpected one. This incredible mansion is available for events, just be careful and don't go and smash anything.  Enjoy!

Love the friction between modern sculptural furniture and the traditional architectural elements.

The huge Acanthus leaf ornaments hanging between Ionic Columns.

They've got their 10,000 hours or more

If you have read Malcolm Gladwell's book, Outliers: The Story of Success then you're familiar with his theory about how all successful men and women besides having wonderful and enduring qualities have a continuous common factor among them which is an incredible amount of hours at practicing and getting perfect at what they love and what they are passionate about.  Gladwell claims that in order to be an "Outlier" one should complete 10,000 hours doing what one wants to excel in.  The book is way deeper and more explanatory and it goes into greater details about his theory and how everything makes totally sense, so if you haven't read it, I strongly suggest that you do.
I can't help connecting everything I read to design, so the first outlier in design that came to my mind was Albert Hadley and with him some members of what I call "The magic circle."  No I don't mean Palates, you!, I mean all the successful designers who once worked for Albert Hadley and seem to have enduring success.  I'm not going to go into detail as how I calculated the hours because it could be tedious but only the period from 1962 to 1999 during the time of Parish-Hadley partnership He seems to have had under his belt more than 72,224 hours; business hours only.  That is not counting the times when a designer keeps working mentally and takes every detail of the work home.  Isn't that amazing!? 

Bunny Williams who worked for Alber Hadley for 22 years.  During that time she had only 42,944 hours.  Amazing!

Miles Redd, even though he didn't work directly for Mr. Hadley but he got some of the magic circle through Bunny.  Miles opened his firm in 1998 and before that he worked for Bunny Williams for 5 years and before that for John Rosselli.  That is approximately a total of 23 years.  You do the math...

David Easton  worked for Parish-Hadley from 1967 to 1972 to then found David Eston Interiors.  He's been working ever since.  Yes, that many hours!  Uhm... I wonder if blogging counts.  ah.. I don't think so.  :(

Coco Chanel's Many Homes

Chanel (top tree) at her villa La Pausa

Before 31 Rue Cambon, there was an apartment in Boullevard Malesherbes and many others that reflected Coco Chanel's unique style.  Her first door to the good life was at Royallieu, a renovated 14 ct. monastery where she lived with Etienne Balsan, a very prominent man and a horse aficionado.  There, Chanel enjoyed a lavished life rubbing shoulders with high-class gentleman and their female companions.  As a woman of strong personality, she never opted to adapt or copy the styles of the women that frequented these parties; instead she stayed true to her understated and comfortable style.  After a few years Chanel moved to Paris and lived in an apartment also provided by Etienne in Boulevard Malesherbes; here she started as a hat maker and fell in love with Balsan's handsome Polo player friend "Boy" Capel who helped Chanel open a shop in the first floor at 31 Rue Cambon.  During WWI she bought a villa in Biarritz in the Basque coast, with a very Spanish influence; a place where  wealthy people from all over the world used to come and vacation to find some peace.  In this town Chanel also opened a maison de couture.  She then shared an apartment with Boy Capel in the Avenue Gabriel, however after his tragic death she moved to a villa on the hill in Garches where she started displaying her elegant and simple style with beige walls and white furniture.  In the late 1920's she rented an apartment at 29 Foubourgh Saint-Honore that was built in the 18th ct. with heavy gilded boiseries which she hid with mirrors and her many Coromandel screens.  Here she also kept the palette to a minimum of beige, white and dark brown.  This was a home of lavish parties and receptions.  In the early 1930's she moved to the Ritz where she only went to sleep and she would spend her days in her three-room residence above her atelier in 31 Rue Cambon.  During this time she started building her vacation villa, La Pausa in Roquebrune, where she planted twenty century old trees from Antibes.  Guests would be taken to the beach and into town by small cars with drivers- now that is a good life if you ask me.

Abbey of Royallieu

 above, 29 Faubourg Saint-Honore

 Chanel's dining room at 31 Rue Cambon.

Images above were scanned by me from Chanel Jean Leymarie.   Below, more pictures of 31 Rue Cambon, Paris.

A lot to thank William Hogarth: Serpentine Line

William Hogarth 1697-1764 England, was a painter satirist and social critic during the 18th ct.  His satiric paintings and engravings mostly covered and criticized social and political situations by ridiculing conventional and social standards of his times.  One of my favorite work of his is Marriage à-la-mode, a series of six paintings which were later engraved and published, ridiculing arranged marriages where of course the unhappiness of the entire family ends with the tragedy that covers everything from murder to suicide.  Go figure!   "Moral: don’t listen to evil silver-tongued counselors; don’t marry a man for his rank, or a woman for her money; don’t frequent foolish auctions and masquerade balls unknown to your husband; don’t have wicked companions abroad and neglect your wife, otherwise you will be run through the body, and ruin will ensue, and disgrace, and Tyburn"
And you may be wondering why am I reading all this and you're right! but William is entirely responsible for what's called Serpentine Line or Line of Beauty which is the S-shaped curved elongated line that frames an object.  He thought that curves, not Sophia Vergara's in this case, were more dynamic, more interesting to see, more lively and not as dead and static as straight lines.  And I so much agree.  When my professor said these things in class last year I thought "that's my man right there!"  He probably had no idea that his theory would transcend to furniture, hence the Serpentine sideboard and many more wonderful good looking furniture and sculpture that we enjoy today.  Below, a few images that show gracious and beautiful curves.  Enjoy!

images via Nuevo Estilo, Vogue, Elle Decor, Vogue Living Australia, AD and Lace and Tea.