Making a house is creating.
I make houses like others
write poetry, make music,
or paint. A house is more of
a likeness than a portrait.
T
Madeleine Castaing
he World of Madeleine Castaing by Emily
Evans Eerdmans is a magisterial work, part biography,
part portfolio, a long overdue study of one of the
greatest decorators of the 20th century which examines
in enchanting detail her houses, her milieu and most
importantly, her mind. Nowadays the decorator���s art is
often seen as an exercise in the ineffable, the exertion of
pure intuition and taste rather than a form of creation that
is connected, historically, aesthetically and emotionally to
that of literature. Castaing, a prodigious reader, claimed
that Balzac and Stendhal were the greatest decorators,
along, of course, with Proust, whose A la recherch�� du
temps perdu she read twelve times in her lifetime. These
writers are notable for their brilliant depiction of the material
culture of the 19th century, in particular the relationship
between a character and his or her surroundings.
HYLAND
