Author: Heather Robinson

Taking away

Some of you might have already heard the Diana Vreeland quote that “Elegance is refusal.” And in my mind, I am capable of stripping things down to their essence but in reality? Well, not really. I came to realize this while reading the “Moody Interiors” post on the blog From the Right Bank. I loved every single one of those complicated rooms. All of that tactile velvet, worn parquet and massive chandeliers. Proportions out of whack and a little messy. I wrote in response that I am so earnestly trying to force myself towards a cleaner aesthetic but that is not who I am. I am a complex person living with an equally complex man. We have picked up things from all over and love the stories they tell. So I tend to add not subtract most of the time. 
However yesterday, we were forced into doing a little simplifying. As I have mentioned, it is stipulated in our rental contract that we can not put any holes into the structure of the apartment, something that we have gotten around with our artwork by gallery hanging from the ceiling. This too, is technically a no-no and as the estate agent was arriving to do her first visit, we carefully removed everything. She has an eagle-eye. All went well but we were given the gift of rediscovering the beauty of the space. More open,  more peaceful. Remi has promised me that we will try to not put anything up on the walls for a bit in our new place. Something I find it hard to believe as it is usually the very first thing that we do. 
Spaces are not always what we think they are, nor people, nor objects. Oh, the candelabras that I brought home looked so scruffy the next day. Black with soot and forgotteness. I don’t know what their history is to have arrived in such a state but I am slowly erasing the traces of the past. An act that is as beneficial to their appearance as it is to my peace of mind. 
Remi felt the same last week when he launched into taking care of our little garden after an especially stressful day. It too had been abandoned and we moved in was completely overrun by les petites bêtes--insects, slugs, potato bugs that had grown fat from free reign (the previous renter only used the garden as a storage space). We had to bomb everything so strongly that nothing bloomed. Not being horticulturists, we couldn’t even figure out what some of the plants were. But in clawing away the parasites, everything could come back in fine form this year. The chest-high green thing that Remi nearly pulled is actually one of the biggest hortensia, or hydrangeas that I have seen. We still don’t know what the tree is next to it and naturally are open for answers.
This morning, as I was beginning my yoga practice, I had a surprise visitor. With a calamitous rumble and a showering of ashes, a pigeon fell down the chimney, scraping wings as he went and landed with a plop next to me, just behind the fire grate. I kept my breath as calm and spoke low to him while shooshing Ben into the bedroom then reaching for a towel in the bath. By the time I returned, the pigeon had gathered up enough strength to pop onto the log pile. He then strolled into the kitchen as if looking for a mug of coffee and with a whiff was out through the open door. 
Taking off, taking away to find something different, something new. 

Second purchase…Hmm…

Blame it on the rain or my being in a funk but when I passed these pique-cierges, or candelabras sitting on the sidewalk in front of the local junk shop, my heart went out to them. I know the owner, he gave me an incredibly low price “for you. Of course for anyone else it would be much, much more.”  Thigh high candelabras of this quality are getting increasingly rare and increasingly expensive so I was surprised. I also appreciated the sloppy lion’s paws and that the carvings were gossiping angels, not a cross or flaming heart in sight. He assured me that they were made of bronze and had come from une grande maison provençale, a home of consequence. Très bien. My arms hurt as I lugged the pair home, getting soaked in the process. 

I called out to Remi excitedly when I finally closed the front door behind me. As he approached, the corners of his mouth turned down ever so slightly. Uh oh. Pause. “I thought that you wanted to be more stream-lined, less Baroque for the next apartment?” he asked gently, trying to keep his voice as neutral as possible. “Yes, but…” I floundered, gesturing with floppy hands at the pair that we absolutely have no need for whatsoever. He was right and on top it, he confirmed what I had feared, that they weren’t indeed bronze, only metal and a very dirty metal at that. “Should we take them back?” I pestered him with the question throughout the afternoon. “Let’s wait and see.” 

Thunder and lightening cracked above the roofs all through the night. Little to say no one slept well, least of all poor petrified Ben. So what better to do on a dreary day after than to take another look at my purchase? Two hours later and here we are. Too impatient to post once the job is done. Silly girl that I am, I chose to start with the “cleaner” of the two and so imagine that I have many, many hours still ahead but I don’t mind. It has been so soothing to just focus on one task at hand. Simple movements, revealing. A little like rubbing Aladdin’s lamp without any hope of a genie. I am most definitely still on the fence about this pair but I do feel like I am discovering as I go and that is always positive. They certainly have a pretty patina. To be continued…

Where we are now

Remi and I signed the contract for our new rental on Friday and so we will soon be moving on. Before we do, I think it is worthwhile to say a few words about our current rental as it is truly something exceptional. We first started making trips down to Arles with the prospect of moving here in 2003. We visited several astonishingly inexpensive houses to buy (oh, if we had only known how much the prices would go up!) but the real estate agent wanted us to see one rental that was on the market because it was so unique. “You will never see anything like this again,” she said and she was right. We fell in love with the space but did not yet have all of our ducks in a row enough to move. Back in Paris, we told all of our friends about the most incredible apartment that we had seen and that was–gulp!–the same price per month as our tiny duplex. We never forgot it and it became a symbol of what the quality of living in the South could be. It ended up taking nearly two more years for us to find another possibility, which we pounced on. That was the house that we ended up buying and then selling with a heavy heart. Can you imagine our surprise when shortly after, another real estate agent started to describe a new rental that just come on the market? “It is in a hôtel particulier and has a garden attached to the back of the Frères-Prêcheurs Church.” Remi and I turned to each other in disbelief, it was the very same apartment that we had visited all those years ago!

At the time, it seemed as if life was giving us a gift, an encouragement to ease the transition of leaving our house behind. And we settled in so quickly, celebrating with a garden party for 35. We lit a million candles everywhere as night came on. Actually the photo below of the font in the hallway is from that evening. I had filled it with rose petals for the occasion. So many happy memories. 
There are many things that make this apartment special. And to think it was in ruins when it was bought in 1993! Luckily, the owner took the greatest of care in the renovation process, including hiring experts to restore the hand-painted wooden beams that top the two bedrooms and the hallway. There are one of the reasons why the building is listed as a Monument Historique. He once told us that the delicate flowers actually graced the beams in the living room but that the process was so lengthy that he couldn’t afford to save everything!

Ben loves to recline on the cooling dalles de pierre, the large stone blocks. They are quite rare today, even in Provence.

There are many interesting details–the woodwork in the bedroom, the mosaics and the vaulted ceiling in the bath. The cast iron hearth in the fireplace is marked with the date “1777” but we do not know if it is original to the house or not. 
But, what makes this apartment so very special is a feature in the cave, the lower level. A group of archeologists were brought in when vestiges of Roman ruins were discovered during the renovation process. The owner decided to construct a glass flooring above them so that would remain visible. Sadly, the thick glass panels have become slightly fogged with time but we can still make out what was the road leading from the Rhone and the remains of what is thought to have been a market building. This makes for a rather dramatic movie room for us!

Back on the ground floor, arched glass doorways lead from the first courtyard into the house (where there is a well that purportedly once led to a tunnel that ran under the river as an escape route) and from the house into the garden.

I took the final photo below the night that we signed the contract. Ironically, the light had never, ever been more beautiful. So why are we leaving this special place? Because dreams and reality are not the same thing, as we all know. We are going for me. I am incredibly sensitive to light and there isn’t any here. Even now, at 3pm on a June afternoon, I have to have the lights on while I type. As we both work from home, we are forever in the dark. The thought of spending another Winter here is unimaginable. The street-facing rooms all have bars on them for security, leaving us to feel as though we are, if not in prison, then at least in a gilded cage. And so we are moving on to a smaller, humbler apartment (an aspect that also pleases both of us enormously) but we will always, always have such gratitude for this special place that brought us to Arles and comforted us when we most needed it.

One of life’s secrets?

 

I would say that I had humble pie for lunch yesterday but fortunately it was a creamy fruit de mer tarte that was absolutely to die for. The company however, moved me very much. We were at our dear friends Sonny and Michael’s house in St. Remy for a special gathering of some of Sonny’s closest and oldest friends from several continents. At 41, I was the youngest, followed by Remi and a very elegant interior designer from South Africa in her 50s, then the age went up through the 60s to the 70s until 87. That particular gentleman fought at Iwo Jima in World War II and actually saw the famous flag raise. As a fellow American, I thanked him for all that he had done for our country. From what he made Remi understand, the movies cannot begin to convey the horror of the reality of war. His hearing was blown out at Okinawa and he survived the Battle of Guam. Others at the table remembered family members that fought the Battle of the Bulge. But the conversation was not somber and ranged wildly from what it was like to discover a still unknown (and unmined) Angkor or Bali in the 1960s when the only house on the beach in Sanur was that of the painter Le Mayeur. To the Dominique Strauss-Khan scandal  and disappointment in Obama or the advantages of the Kindle. When we were surprised at their being more technologically on the ball than we are, one of the guests responded “If you don’t have the advance at 80, you’re going to miss the boat!” with a glorious laugh. 
And everyone at the table is most certainly not missing out. Ideas sparked like firecrackers, with everyone speaking so excitedly over one another that it was difficult to hear. What incredible stories they all had to share. As Remi wisely said at one moment “We are living in your shadow, the spirit of the Postwar.” And it is true. Remi and I have had our fair share of adventure but these people have lead such Technicolor lives, so much fuller than what most folks even dream of today. And why is that? True, I do not wish the experience of war on anyone, but that same soldier was also capable of taking a cab uptown to his sweetheart after their first date and proposing to her. What have we been dulled by? Remi and I were quiet in the car coming back, thinking about the experience and how fortunate we were to have been invited. It also made us realize that if they had remained so young in spirit it was because they were still so interested in life and beyond that, to have émerveillement, the wonder of a child. What a fine lesson that is for all of us as we age. 

First purchase!

It’s that time of year when quite a few of us have antique-hunting on the brain. For Remi and I, it is a regular activity and has been as long as we have been together. When we first met both of us were starting over and so each piece that we acquired had a story, a provenance. At the time, we lived a short walk away from the Porte de Vanves flea market in Paris and would scour the rows of sellers each weekend, occasionally on both days. It was a wonderful introduction to French design for me as every conceivable period was represented. More often than not we couldn’t afford to buy, but would go for le plaisir des yeux, a feast for the eyes. After our first visit to Arles, we both started being attracted to things that were very different from our Art Deco style. More Louis XV and much lighter. We realized eventually that we were buying for a new life, one in the South of France. It took us two years to actually make the move but when we did we were already well-equipped, almost as if we had forced this major life change into being.

And that process is already happening again with our next move. Yesterday afternoon, I pulled Remi away from his computer and we drove out to Troc-Soury. A little bit of everything is crammed under the tin roof of a hangar that is stiflingly hot in Summer and freezing in Winter and yet I love to go–namely  to be fussed over by Michel and Jean-Philippe. Sure enough, Michel pushed Remi out of the way jokingly when we arrived saying “Excuse me, I need to say hello to a beautiful lady.” My hair was pulled back in a bumpy bun, I was floating in enormous wrinkled lined shorts and yet I gratefully offered up my cheek to be kissed. Let’s just say that unlike our experience this weekend, the welcome put me in a shopping mood. 

And it didn’t take long. Within fifteen minutes, I spied a gorgeous mirror stuffed into a crowded wooden chest. Napoleon III in shape, it has an air of the 1920’s with its delicate etchings scratched into a gold frame. The mercury mirror is completely faded and splotched. En bref, patina. I haven’t had such a coup de coeur (think love at first sight) for a piece in a long time. And to top it off, it was a true steal. Vendu! 

Other pieces tempted me. The wall sconce with its lovely pampilles could be charming if given a Gustavien touch. Maybe with candles in it for a hallway? Not bad for 30€. Sadly, all of the chandeliers need to be rewired but again for 40€, the delicate Marie-Therese could be interesting as a candelabra. For the furniture, I was initially drawn to the massive teak Indian bookcase. Remi nixed it as kitschy. We both felt that the Henri II buffet (only 120€!) would be quite something if well painted, not that we need it. Just fun to imagine.

Once home, Remi set to work. Look how the mirror glowed once he stripped away the black layers of dust and grime. 

I had a little “aha” as to why I had wanted it so immediately. Its rough around the edges-ness reminds me of one of our very favorite pieces–a fantastic lithograph of Henri IV riding back into Paris that is currently pushed off to the side due to its heft since we are not allowed to put any holes into the walls of this Monument Historique building (and yes, there is a very good story to go with the crocodile skull beside it, in case you were wondering). I have been missing Henri and all of the other unusual characters parading about. Hopefully, they will return to the spotlight soon. As for our first purchase for our next apartment, it is sitting on the bedroom mantle, reflecting the headboard that we made out of old shutters.  The mirror isn’t appropriate for the room and suddenly everything else is starting to  look awkward to my eyes. Out of place. A sure sign that I am getting ready to move on if ever there was one. 

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