on to certain beloved pieces of furniture and objets that
appear in published versions of much earlier Grange
residences. I recognize the madly tufted beige chaise
longue from earlier incarnations, along with the charming
Japoniste screen above the bed. Then there are the arcane
Modernist masterpieces, refined, esoteric, priceless, that
attend supreme taste crowned with fame: a bronze cat
by Diego Giacometti, a chair, in light and dark mahogany
designed by Emilio Terry for the Chateau de Rochecotte,
the white bust of a young woman by architect Alfred
Janniot. I could continue this catalogue indefinitely, but
will leave it for readers to discover de Nicolay's French
Interiors for themselves, venturing to say that its 260 pages
set forth a definitive canon, not just of French design, but
of its most manifest tastemakers of the twentieth century.
Speaking of which, I open another, smaller book by de
Nicolay, her 2010 narrative catalogue of an extraordinary
HYLAND
