Carte blanche
Granted free rein to decorate a 19th-century residence for her parents, architect and designer Marine Bonnefoy took a few liberties to effect a beautiful result.
Located in the Beaujolais region, the house was built in 1867 as a country house for a family of silk producers from nearby Lyon. In the living room, the ‘Dialogue’ table designed by architect Marine Bonnefoy and made with samba wood base and an MDF top. Surrounded by vintage wood and straw chairs by Audoux Minet, the table is topped with a set of earthenware ceramics from art, craft and design gallery Graziella Semerciyan. The ceiling light was designed by Marine and constructed by her father with ceramic shades made by her uncle. On the righthand wall is the ‘Eos’ mirror, designed by Ben & Aja Blanc and made in mirrored glass, silk, mohair, wool and brass.
After graduating from architecture school, Marine Bonnefoy decided it was time to get her hands dirty. “My studies were very intellectually oriented and had no link to actual construction,” she says. “By the end of them, I hadn’t even been taught what holds up a wall.” To find out, she spent a year working for a building firm. “I demolished facades with a pneumatic drill, learnt plastering, wiring and plumbing, and made concrete. It was fantastic!” she says.
That kind of pragmatic approach has certainly stood her in good stead. Still in her early 30s, she has three times been named on the French edition of Architectural Digest magazine’s list of the top 100 decorators in the world. She recently completed a 95sqm apartment in Paris’s elegant Palais Royal area, is currently building houses from the ground up in both Marseille and Bordeaux, and is about to embark upon the renovation and extension of a seaside property in Brittany. With each project, her approach is the same. “I don’t do anything straight off,” she says. “I go about my daily life and it matures in my mind. I think about it when I’m cooking, walking and shopping, and only start drawing about three weeks later.”
She inherits her love of construction from her father, Philippe, a retired telecommunications technician, who oversaw the three-year renovation of the family home. “He did everything,” says Marine. “It was he who painted the stairwell balanced in precarious equilibrium on a ladder. And there was not just one coat, but several!” He also laid the floors, installed the kitchen and bathrooms, and even made the custom chandelier in the living room. The house in question dates from 1867 and is located in a part of the Beaujolais wine region known as ‘Little Tuscany’ for its rolling hills and golden light. It was originally constructed for a family of silk producers from nearby Lyon and has many of the same architectural attributes as the grand apartments of that city – beamed ceilings, herringbone parquet floors, marble fireplaces and its monumental staircase that would not look out of place in a multi-unit residential building. In 1919, it was sold to a family of wine producers, who installed a large vat on the ground floor and a hidden trapdoor above through which they could add sugar surreptitiously – a forbidden practice at the time.
Marine still recalls her first visit with her parents in the autumn of 2014. “As soon as we saw the stairwell, we immediately fell in love with it,” she says. “Then, we walked into the living room and saw the view of the surrounding vineyards. I said to my parents, ‘You have to buy it!’” That said, the acquisition required a certain leap of faith. It had formerly been occupied by an elderly woman, who had lived in only one part of the house. There was no sewage system, no running water and heating was provided by a coal-burning stove. It stood in the corridor on the second floor, which was decorated with a floral wallpaper and an armchair upholstered in a pink leopard print.
For the interiors, Marine struck a deal with her parents, who agreed to give her carte blanche for the decoration. She also insisted that they keep no furniture from their old home. The result is perfectly in tune with her aesthetic. »
In the bedroom hallway, the ‘Moiste’ chair by Christian Astuguevieille from Zebres boutique, Paris, is wrapped in hemp rope and faces a series of ‘Ocelles’ artworks by Vincent Beaurin made from polystyrene and glass under ‘24 Karat Blau’ pendant lights by Ingo Maurer. Illuminating the entry hall are wall lights from the Hanging Lamp collection by Muller van Severen for Valerie_Objects. Propped against the wall is a dried heliconia plant from Debeaulieu, Paris. In the kitchen, the ‘Formakami’ pendant lights are by Jaime Hayon for &Tradition. The 19th-century table was bought on Leboncoin, a French website similar to eBay, with chairs by Colette Guéden. The splashback is made from tiles by a local firm called Céramiques du Beaujolais and
matched with a benchtop in Zimbabwe granite. The bricks on the walls were salvaged from a nearby factory.