Kazuyo Sejima | house in a plum grove
“In France, sex and art were once inseparable.” Le Chabanais, operating near the Louvre at rue Chabanais from 1878 till 1946, was one the most luxurious brothels of the old Parisian high-class society, notably in La Belle Époque. It attracted many contemporary artists, from Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Guy de Maupassant, Cary Grant, Marlene Dietrich to Salvador Dalí… Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec contributed 16 paintings for the brothel and was for a long time, a frequent visitor.
Picture: The Art Deco “presentation niches” at One Two Two, where scantily clad girls would sit and meet clients.
More photos can be found here
Margiela headquarters in Paris; most of the doors in the Rue Saint-Maur offices are wallpapered with images of other doors.
A fascinating room, although odd by today’s standards, is the Print Room in Castletown House which was decorated by Lady Louisa and friends, following the fashion of the 1760s, with cut-outs of favourite images. Castletown House, Celbridge, County Kildare, Ireland’s is a Palladian country house built in 1722 for the Conolly family; it was designed by Italian architect Alessandro Galilei. The house interior decoration was finished by his wife Lady Louisa (great-granddaughter of Charles II of England and Louise de Keroualle) during the 1760s and 1770s.
