HYLAND
In Balzac's 1831 novel, La peau de chagrin (The Wild
Ass's Skin), an impoverished young man, about to throw
himself into the Seine, enters an unusual antiques shop,
a magical emporium brimming with precious furniture
and objects from all countries and eras: "Every land of
earth seemed to have contributed some stray fragment
of its learning, some example of its art." The elderly
shopkeeper gives the young man a curious piece of skin,
inscribed in Arabic, which grants the owner whatever he
desires, but which shrinks upon fulfillment of each wish.
To enter a room designed by Stephen Bastone is to
enter Balzac's emporium of the ages; we half-expect
to discover a magical talisman hanging upon the wall.
