Get Inspired: Ruffled Curtains

Haute couturière Elsa Schiaparelli in a window of her showroom at 21 Place Vendôme in Paris. Image by François Kollar from "Good Housekeeping", June 1938. Republished in "Shocking! The Art and Fashion of Schiaparelli" (Yale University Press, 2004).

Believe it or not reductivist extraordinaire Jean-Michel Frank had a thing for curtains with ruffled edges. The influential French interior designer hung them at the windows of numerous projects, commercial and residential, including the fashion salon of Elsa Schiaparelli at 21 Place Vendôme in Paris in 1935, shortly after he decorated the salons of Mainbocher and Lelong. And by ruffled curtains I don't mean Priscillas, those overwrought, dramatically crisscrossed curtains adored by Dorothy Draper and my own mother. Instead I mean sumptuous, dead plain, unlined panels of wide-wale white piqué (a fabric that deserves to come back in a big way), the leading edges trimmed with cascades of bias-cut piqué tucked and sewn into gentle loops and whorls and tied with matching tiebacks.

Heaven, no?

Well Said: Edmond de Goncourt

Edmond de Goncourt portrayed in an 1882 etching by French artist Félix Braquemond. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Mrs. Lessing J. Rosenwald, 1987.

"I have often said to myself that if I were not a man of letters, if I had not got money, my chosen profession would have been to invent interiors for rich people. I should have loved being allowed to have given me carte blanche to work out the decor and furniture of a palace with just four walls, using what I could find from dealers, artists, modern industry, and in my own head."

So said Edmond de Goncourt (1822—1896), French man of letters and diarist extraordinaire.

Well Said: Henry James

"I prefer a good 'interior' to a good landscape. The impression has a greater intensity—the thing itself a more complex animation. I find I like fine old rooms that have been occupied in a fine old way ...'"

So wrote Henry James (1843—1916), expatriate American novelist, shown above in a 1913 charcoal sketch by John Singer Sargent. NOTE: James didn't actually say the words quoted; he was repeating, in agreement, what an unnamed friend said as they toured a palace in Rome in 1873.

North of the Border

Though An Aesthete's Lament has gone silent—am uncertain if this is a complete cessation or merely what a friend calls "a productive hiatus"—I felt I must come back for just a moment.

Some time ago the magazine Canadian House & Home kindly asked me to present a list, with comments, of 10 rooms that set my heart racing. I don't know if you've seen the slideshow but do visit the magazine's website if you have a moment.

Just click here.

The End of the Line

Dear Readers,

For the last couple of years I have enjoyed writing for you—digging through old magazines and crumbling books, touring the various highways and byways of interior design. Few experiences in my writing life have been more delightful or more fulfilling. But blogging takes a toll. I'm exhausted, frankly, and have decided to bring An Aesthete's Lament to a close. But I wish to thank you for your encouragement, your words of praise, your occasional brickbats of criticism, and most of all, your desire to make your personal world more beautiful and more delightful.

Sincerely,

The Aesthete