Lee Stanton Blog

Inside Lake Lugano's Villa Cicogna-Mozzoni, 16th-century trompe-l'oeil frescos abound. Photo: The World of Interiors; A Decoration Book, Minn Hogg and Wendy Harrop, 1988

Like so many things, the French have a word for it. That strange  phenomenon for when the eye sees something it knows is not there. The "trompe-l'oeil," or trick of the eye, is an artistic technique that encompasses a range of sly graphic tricks. From wood painted to resemble marble, to incognito boxes designed as books, the trompe-l'oeil foremost aims to delude the eye, to present one thing as another. A compelling, if artificial strategy, one wonders how its charms so persist. Like the false art of a magician, the trompe l'ceil delights us by its artistry and ingenuity alone. We are conscious our eye has been duped by a highly crafted process, yet the less conscious of it we are, the greater our measure of its success. 

The term "trompe-l'oeil" was first coined by artist Louis-Léopold Boilly, who so titled his submission to the Paris Salon of 1800. His piece depicted pinned up scraps of paper as a sort of moodboard, though the only materials used were paint and canvas. The artistic strategy was not new, however, and in fact its origins might even be traced to the ancient Greek myth of Zeuxis.

Trompe-l'oeil panelling from Polton House. Photo: World of Interiors, Feb. 2004

The story goes that a royal competition was held among artists, to see who could paint the best picture. The famous Zeuxis produced his piece, a still-life of grapes so convincing that two birds descended upon to peck at them. The crowd was amazed, and declared him the unquestioned winner. Then rival artist Parrhasius stood up to show his piece. Zeuxis, with an air of self-satisfied bemusement said, "Come, pull back the curtains and show us what you've got." Parrhasius stared, "Pull them back yourself." Zeuxis tried and tried, and when he could not, realized the trick that had been played him. Humbled and thoroughly impressed, Zeuxis declared Parrhasius the winner, saying, "I could but fool beast. You my friend, could but fool man."

I love nothing more than to find a unique piece of trompe-l'oeil in my travels. There's something so intriguing about the genre as an aesthetic category; the level of craft and imagination necessary to produce a successful piece always guarantees interesting results. Below, I've shared with you some of my personal favorites from our collection, examples I feel have a wonderful mix of understatement and panache. 

These late 19th-century French panels have been skillfully painted to resemble blonde burled wood. Their finish is so naturalistic it makes the eye wonder...

This tea caddy box from Victorian England is a remarkable example of trompe-l'oeil inlay. The swirling floral medallions have a distinctly three-dimensional character, though their surface is completely flat. 

It's not a book, it's a box! A cleverly imagined item from late 19th-century England, the front cover opens to reveal interior storage space. 

Flipping through the pages of AD Italia, something of a lightbulb went off. As I stumbled across the otherworldly gallery cum workshop that Florentine antiquarian Monica Lupi calls home, it occurred to me that our new work-home environments were not such a novelty at all. The need for hybrid space has long given rise to architectural ingenuity, and our reconsidering what that means for the designer/artist/collector/aesthete/anyone really, might even find its antecedent in the salons of turn-of-the-century Europe. 

What with the unlikely alchemies and intuitive eclecticism of her capacious atelier, it appears Lupi is something of a mad-scientist.  Embracing odd juxtapositions of style and epoch, and favoring the unique and personal over the expected and trendy, Lupi is driven by passion and instinct, not by the demands of the current mode. It is this spirit of the artist—an intransigently creative and indvidualistic spirit—that gives shape and color to her home. The material manifestation of years spent researching, hunting, honing and inventing, Lupi has created a space which seamlessly flows between work and home environment. 

I was particularly struck with the way she used statement-making architectural elements to create new spatial and textural relationships, as well as to provide opportunities for the display of art and other curious objects. By sticking to a limited color palette, and with great consideration for scale and proportion, Lupi manages to create a richly dimensional harmony between various contrasting styles and materials.   

I always admire a home that manages to strike a balance between the intimate and the composed, but the way Lupi seems to have been able to divest her space with a degree of the professional and utilitarian without sacrificing a warm and relaxed style, evokes an updated take on the inviting atmosphere of 27 rue de Fleurus, the famously simmering home slash think-tank of Gertrude Stein on Paris’s Left Bank. 

I hope we can all be inspired by the immense spirit of joie-de-vivre and guttural instincts with which Lupi crafts her immersive environment. That spirit of inquiry, of curiosity and conversation—these are the qualities that most connect the needs of the work-space with those of the domestic.

Photos by Francesco Dolfi for AD Italia

Lifestyle changes usually happen over years and even decades. If you are like me, you can remember your lifestyle changes at home. Remember when living at home meant living with your parents? And then with roommates? Remember when you finally had a home you could call your own? Remember when you furnished your first home and the compromises you had to make? 

Then priorities changed. You got busy with your career and social life. Long days at the office, lengthy commutes, travel and late nights out with clients or friends limited your life at home. In essence you became an empty nester from our own home.

Recent events have changed our lifestyles once again and more rapidly than we ever expected. We are now spending more time at home with those compromised things in our homes. We are living in a space that we never finished or with things we "just got" to fill a space or serve a purpose thinking they “will do” for the time being. We never really “loved” them. We never really thought of them as a long term investment. We thought that we would eventual replace them. However, we never got around to it because we were busy with other priorities in our lives.

As an antiquarian, I am fortunate that the things that I have lived with in my home over the years have come and gone allowing me to edit and live only with the things I love. Whether it’s by the nature of my profession as a curator of antiques or the joy of being a collector with the satisfaction of upgrading my collection, I have managed to edit and eliminate the things I could live without and keep only the things I still love to this day. As a result, the more time I spend at home, the more I appreciate the things in my home from a different perspective. They have evolved with me. They tell stories. They tell my story. 

Home of late gallerist Karten Schubert 
via World of Interiors

With this in mind, I am reminded of an article in World of Interiors about a gallerist and collector in London who curated his home as he did his gallery. The photos from his home provided a visual understanding of his life through his belongings. As we all look forward to once again have guests into our homes, this story begs a big question. Do the belongings in your home provide an understanding of where you have been and where you are in your life. Are they a proper reflection of your life and what you love?

I feel a sense of pride when clients tell me that no matter how much their home has evolved they still get joy from the items that were sourced from me. There is a sense of satisfaction in knowing that as their lifestyles changed, especially as they spend more time at home, their love for these items remained constant and maybe even got stronger over time.

There is no doubt about it, our lifestyles have changed in a matter of months. We are realizing new priorities. As we spend more time in our homes, we are questioning the things in our homes. With this in mind, I say love it or let it go. Start a new relationship. Move on from the things you have “just lived with” over the years and start living with the things you love. Start realizing the power of love...at home.

- Lee 

                         In Residence: Jasper Conran | via NOWNESS

François Halard via Apartmento Magazine

Comfort has come a long way from wooden and stone benches in the Middle Ages when it was thought that the body was diametrically opposed to the soul and that the body pulled us toward the sinful, sensual and earthly ways rather than the godly, spiritual and divine ways. The Renaissance was not only a fervent period of cultural, artistic, political and economic rebirth. It was also a period when we began to embrace the body in addition to the soul and the concept of comforting our body led to the development of comfort in the home. We started to see pillows on those hard benches in the 1600’s and eventually the concept of integrating comfort into a functional piece of furniture ie. upholstered furniture during the Elizabethan period in England and the Louis XIV period in France. Needless to say, it didn’t take long until the upholstered chair, settees, chaise lounges, canapes, daybeds and not to mention love seats became proliferate in Europe as well in England.

Needless to say comfort evolved and we saw entire rooms dedicated to comfort. ie. living or drawing rooms with the sofa as the mainstay. Sofas complete with designs that integrated carved wood frames integrated with upholstery were common in these earlier eras until the chesterfield in England retired the carved frames and introduced a fully cushioned yet still tailored sofa.

The delicate carved wood frames with swirls, stars, animals and angel wings were replaced with straight lines and geometric carved frames until the wood frame completely disappeared into the simplicity of the fully upholstered sofa as we know it today.

Ok enough about the evolution of the sofa. You are probably wondering about couches and how they fit into this story. It is said that sofas evolved from chairs with backs and arms to sit on whereas couches evolved from daybeds and chaise lounges. They did not have traditional arms and backs and were intended to lay on. Sofas are typically larger than couches and accommodate more
people to sit in a social setting where people congregate such as a sitting room, living room and family room. Couches are smaller and usually more comfy for you to lay on alone or more intimately with another usually in a more private area of the house such as a lounge or bedroom. Simply speaking, I like to think of them as a sofa for social or a couch to slouch.

Tufted Sofa, England circa 1880 via Lee Stanton 

Sources:
1st Photo:François Halard via @ApartamentoMagazine Instagram
2nd Photo: WRJ Design via @RushJenkins Instagram
3rd Photo: Clements Design via Architectural Digest