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Interiors
The Monaco Paradox
The yacht show is both serious business and a celebration of a way of life. Nowhere does this paradox express itself in tangible form more than in the luxury items on display. Beautifully crafted, modern in temperament — they’re clearly serious objets. At the same time they each exhibit unique flair. Louis Postel previews some showstoppers.
Turn on your heart light
Marry high touch to high tech Art Deco celebrated the machine age with a burst of stylized geometry. Paradoxically, its glamorization of the machine manifested itself through master craftsmen hand-working lux materials. No one did this better in furniture than Emile-Jacques Ruhlmann (1879-1933), whose work has been faithfully reproduced by one of Larry Ellison’s preferred craftsmen, Frank Pollaro. This hand-polished Fluted Sideboard comes in genuine macassar ebony, with torpedo-shaped legs, nickel pulls, sabots and accents. 80" x 20 ¼" x 42 ½", price on request. www.pollaro.com
What could be more gala, or romantic, than starry lights lining the contours of a yacht, while playing off distant lights reflected in the harbor and the constellations above? In 2011, uber lighting designer Yann Kersalé partnered with Baccarat to create these wireless Jallum candle lights. Now Jallum’s latest iteration features a USB cord and removable charging base. Four candle lights, $4,080, in black or white. www.baccarat.com
A lot on your plate This china collection by Roberto Cavalli resolves another paradox: the seemingly opposed desires for richness as well as restraint. Here we have veins of platinum lacing through the plates’ Arctic whiteness, relieved by an artist’s hand with a raised lizard skin texture, or a bold leopard skin and Renaissance motifs. It’s much — but not too much. From Monaco-based Boutsen, price on request. www.boutsendesign.com
When the lights go down in the city An office building can take architectural seriousness to exponential heights, an exercise in cutting and pasting one level of design on another, ad infinitum. How then, one wonders, can there be anything glamorous or fun about these masses of identical glass? Leave it to furniture-maker David Linley to make the transformative magic happen. His latest line of Lightscape furniture features opalescent mother-of-pearl reflecting through windows of his miniature buildings. Pictured here is Dusk in the form of a £90,000 Cocktail Console, executed in ash burr, dark gray eucalyptus and black sycamore veneers, surfaced with a shimmering silver leaf panel of the map of London. www.davidlinley.com
While serious decision-making and celebratory moods presents one paradox at the Monaco show, the tension between elegant and casual presents another. Designer Romeo Sozzi of Promemoria nicely resolves this with his Lake Como-inflected Menaggio deck chairs of maroon-stained ash wood and a lightly hued strip of bronze. We would venture to guess that whoever sits conversing in a Menaggio can’t help but be serious and celebratory at the same time. Starting from €1,659. www.promemoria.com
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PHOTOGRAPH: XXXXXX PHOTOGRAPHS: THIERRY PEUREUX (TOP RIGHT)
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