The White Dinner in Paris

I wasn't there, but wish I had been. This looks otherworldly divine! The annual "everything is white" dinner is held in Paris in the summer, and this year was in front of Notre Dame cathedral. Isn't it beautiful?

all images via Yahoo... yep Yahoo News!

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thanks for visiting! Kit

The Incredible Bathroom of Paris Stage Director...

Jean-Pascal Levy-Trumet. Photographed by the incomparable Pieter Estersohn. Appeared in the April 2003 issue of Elle Decor magazine.

I just can't get over how much I love this bathroom. I love the tub, I love the steel walls, I love the chandelier. It just speaks to me. I just love its clean lines, its simplicity, its elegance. I love the juxtaposition of all that industrial nail-headed steel sheeting against the amber old glass of the chandelier, and the smooth concrete of the tub. The illumination: completely breathtaking.

Parisian Bathroom of Jean-Pascal Levy-Trumet

photographed by Pieter Esterholm

{ Thanks! to Daniel Hale of Serendipity Rising for the photo source and information }

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CONTACT:

Kit Golson Design

for elegant, sustainable and pragmatic

Chic Provence Interior Design

Tadelakt: "Hard as Stone and Soft as Silk"

The first time I saw tadelakt was in St. Tropez, France, several years ago. I was immediately transfixed by the pearlescent, translucent, hand-rubbed-all-the-way-to-glossy, impervious-to-water finish. I had never seen anything like it before, and rarely have since. I had stumbled upon one of the oldest and most treasured plaster finishes in the world. The art of tadelakt is 4,000 years old, and comes from Morocco.

Designers in France are using it today for its silky texture and indescribable patina, which are unmatched by any other plaster finish available. It is absolutely stunning.

Tadelakt functions extremely well in wet areas and can form a seamless, monolithic finish to back splashes, countertops and sinks in kitchen, bathroom, shower and powder room areas. Made from natural hydraulic lime, quartz and marble powder, tadelakt is white in color and can be pigmented using natural earth pigments.

The tadelakt process is deceptively simple. A natural powder paste is applied to the surface, then polished with a smooth stone. This is repeated seven times. Finally, the surface is sealed by rubbing with a black olive oil soap.

To fully appreciate it's allure, it is said that you have to caress it. I couldn't agree more!

Satiny Coral Tadelakt Finish on

Integrated Shelves in

French Kitchen

A Parisian Salle de Bain Finished in

Black and Taupe Tadelakt

Tadelakt Taupe Walls in

Parisian Salle de Bain

Tadelakt Taupe Walls in

Parisian Water Closet

Charcoal Grey Integral Tadelakt Bathtub in

Parisian Bathroom

Tadelakt Red Shower Walls in

Chic Provencal Salle de Bain

Tadelakt Red Sculptural Bowl in

Provence, France

Creme Tadelakt Walls in Parisian Salle de Bain

Gorgeous Tadelakt

Parisian Salle de Bain

Beautiful Tadelakt Red and Gold Backsplash and

Integral Sink in Provence, France

Tadelakt Grey Countertops and

Shelves in Parisian Kitchen

Tadelakt Backsplash, Countertop and Integral Sink in

Provence, France

Tadelakt plaster finish would be gorgeous and luxurious in our American homes. I can see it working beautifully in chic Napa and Sonoma wine country homes.

If you have seen tadelakt installed here, I would love to see pictures!

Resources:

Les Valayans

Paris

Vancouver

Website

Photos Courtesy of Traditions du Maroc
and Maroc Design in
Paris and Avignon, France

.......

Kit Golson Design

for elegant, sustainable and pragmatic

Chic Provence Interior Design

Encountering Jacko at Versailles

This week the world buried a beloved icon:  Michael Jackson, 50.  He will never again visit his once-beloved home at Neverland. 

Like everyone else, I know and love his music. But it is impossible to ignore the singularly, flagrantly, creatively, self absorbed visual phenomenon that was also Michael Jackson. He wrote songs and music; he choreographed himself brilliantly. He won over the whole world. 

But that was not enough. He turned his artistic vision literally upon himself and the result was that at 50 he had a face and body that had been artfully re-created to his own will. {What was that rigid and sadly unexpressive mask hiding?}

Michael Jackson and Bubbles at Versailles

Photo by Kit Golson

When I went to visit the Chateau of Versailles last September with friends who live just around the corner from there, it seemed a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon in the middle of a very busy design trip. 

To my astonishment, the venerable old rooms and halls held installations by American pop-artist Jeff Koons. Along with metal dogs and inflatable lobsters in the ornate palatial apartments I found this poignantly sweet ceramic sculpture of Michael Jackson and his beloved chimp, Bubbles.

It is fitting that this is the closest I ever came to Michael Jackson, and that I found him at the Chateau of Louis XIV. For Michael himself was the King of Pop, and the spooky, lonely and majestic halls of Versailles---the glittering Neverland of its time---suited him perfectly. 

A Gloomy Day at Chateau de Versailles

Photo by Kit Golson

Gate at Chateau of Versailles

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Kit Golson Design 

for elegant, sustainable and pragmatic

 Chic Provence Interior Design

Rudolf Stingel: Staggering Art From Building Materials

Stairway at the Grand Palais Exhibition, Fall 2008

As an interior designer, it was with great interest that I spotted a silvered insulation panel hanging on the walls of the Biennale des Antiquaires at the Grand Palais in Paris in fall 2008.   

At first glance, I thought it had been an embarrassing oversight on the part of the Facilities Management, but on closer inspection, I found some scrawling across its surface, thus revealing itself as....art. Jarringly incongruous with the usual Bonnards, Bougereaux, and Breugels at this show, I was captivated with this piece. 

2007 Installation at the Whitney Museum of American Art in NYC 

of Silver Insulation Brilliantly Lighted by a Chandelier, 

and Where Visitors Wrote on the Celotex Insulation Boards

1991 Installation of Orange Carpeting as Art in NYC Gallery 

If you ever doubted the ability of color to reflect in your rooms, 

believe it or not, these are white walls 

I wasn't the only person curious at the Paris show in Fall 2008

Further research revealed that its creator, the slightly subversive Rudolf Stingel, has a penchant for using the prosaic everyday tools of my trade...carpeting, insulation, chandeliers....to create stunning, unforgettable and brilliant installations that engage and enrapture his audience, if not baffle them. 

Is this that royal man parading down the street sans clothing....;-)....? 

There are lessons for us interior designers to be found in studying Stingel's art:

• never underestimate the powerful impact of a single element when used in large amounts
•  use what you already have on hand
• invite others to give their input
  
• light your work exquisitely
  
•  hire a great publicist
•  reflected color counts....a lot

The 225 cm x 210 cm piece I saw in Paris?    700,000 euros.   That's  $1,036,000. 

An emperor could buy a lot of new clothes with that!

photos courtesy of the artist and Paula Cooper Gallery, 

New York and Art or Idiocy?'s photostream

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Kit Golson Design 

for elegant, sustainable and pragmatic

 Chic Provence Interior Design

The Evocative Images of Teo Jasmin

Sometimes you just want to evoke another time and place. When our own time and place are getting just a little...tiresome...we long for something a little exotic that can transport us to another era in a faraway land.

If you love old, hand-colored  photography as much as I do, and have a fascination for the Meiji Era in Japan, these graphics from Teo Jasmin in Paris will not disappoint. If you find DaVinci's work as inspiring today as it was in the 15th C., invite him into your home. If you yearn to connect with the tribal people whose lives could not be more dissimilar to yours, bring these images, larger than life, into your rooms.

Asian Bride and Groom 

The Mona Lisa and One of Her Contemporaries

Tribespeople

Meiji Era Tea Ceremony

Nothing conveys immediacy like a photograph. And rarely will you find such appealing designs as these at great, affordable prices. 

So what if you can't make that trip to the Olduvai Gorge this summer?   Now you don't have to. 

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Kit Golson Design 

for elegant, sustainable and pragmatic

 Chic Provence Interior Design

On a Roll at Deyrolle

If you love the natural world as much as I do, but find that the things outside in your neighborhood are just a little...bland....come to Deyrolle in Paris. On the Rue du Bac tucked into the second floor of a venerable old building, you will enter a wondrous place, this designer's delight (the Prince Jardinier, Louis Albert de Broglie, has restored it beautifully from the devastating fire last year!)

If the Pottery Barn on steriods look just isn't cutting it for you anymore, and you want to inject excitement and wonder into your interiors, consider adding a little local color from Mother Nature. She will forgive you for lusting after her exquisite exotica and wanting to take it home.

But she will never forgive you if her treasures languish in your attic.

Kit Golson for Chic Provence

650-302-6883

for chic, sustainable interior design solutions