Despite these magnificent acts of patronage, Moise's
daughter Beatrice, a Catholic convert, and her family
were deported to Auschwitz, where they died.
The story of the house on 17th Avenue somehow, in a
serpentine, beautiful way, brings the Camondo story
full circle, for Robert Couturier, along with such design
eminences as Jacques Grange and Philippe Starck,
was a student of the Ecole Camondo, founded in 1944
and named for the family who had so advanced the
decorative arts and originally housed in its mansion.
The school is France's acknowledged royal road to
the title, for a tiny number of highly gifted students, of
architect d'interieur. Couturier carries on that legacy
in a way the Camondos, driven from the lands they
enriched, would have approved, disseminating French
culture and especially its art of the interior to a wider
world, hopefully one grown more tolerant. H Lisa Zeiger
Robert
Couturier
69 Mercer St, New York
(212) 463-7177
John M. Hall
Photography
jmhallphoto@earthlink.net
HYLAND
