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In Summers in France, Caroline Clifton-Mogg celebrates classic French country interiors, with their sense of timeless comfort, simplicity, and elegance.
Think of summers in France and what comes to mind? Hot sunlight on a stone-flagged terrace. Bees buzzing amidst a sea of lavender. Wandering through a local market and filling a basket with bread, cheese, and ripe peaches. Sipping wine as dusk falls, then eating by candlelight in the warm evening air. These aspects please all the senses—and so too does the distinctive decorative style of rural France.
Against this backdrop, Caroline Clifton-Mogg visits 15 glorious homes that display the legendary French sense of style and evoke all the sensual appeal of summers spent in this beautiful part of the world. Throughout the book, she also explores the elements of the French country look, from the color palette and materials typical of rural style, to cosy and chic soft furnishings and decorative accessories and antiques sourced at local markets and brocantes.
From the Publisher
FAIRY-TALE PAVILION
The American decorator Kenyon Kramer lives outside Aix-en-Provence in a perfect classical pavilion – which isn’t actually classical at all. The story of how it came to be is a very French one – almost worthy of a conte de fées by the old French teller of fairy tales Charles Perrault.
PRETTY AS A PICTURE
Diana Bauer and her husband found their 300-year-old farmhouse in Cotignac over 50 years ago, long before the current wave of Provence-lovers descended on the region. When they bought the house, it was tiny, and almost a ruin, not having been lived in for half a century.
GLORY RESTORED
After she and her late husband bought the Château de Gignac in 1989, Michelle Joubert took on the task of returning it to the glory it might have enjoyed had not the hand of history intervened; for many years, she worked on the house using only old materials and recreated every room to perfection.
CLASSICAL RESTORATION
Like so many other country houses – particularly in the large rural areas of France – the fortunes of this renovated bastide took a turn for the worse in the 19th century, when it slowly degenerated from being an elegant 18th-century mansion into a lowly farm with gardens levelled and turned into fields.
LYRICAL LEGACY
Carole Oulhen lives with her husband and family in a large, early 19th-century house in a village outside Avignon. Neither a mas nor a manoir, it is the type of house that can be seen in villages across France: solid, well-built and with a personality and a history very much its own.
SPARE SOPHISTICATION
A peasant’s house outside Grasse, dating from the 17th century, was restored by the late antique dealer Maurizio Epifani. ‘Old houses should be left in their original state as far as possible,’ he said, ‘and there should never be heavy restructuring of the exterior, which should remain integral to the surrounding environment.’
Publisher : Ryland Peters & Small (July 4, 2023)
Language : English
Hardcover : 208 pages
ISBN-10 : 1788795202
ISBN-13 : 978-1788795203
Item Weight : 3 pounds
Dimensions : 8.65 x 1 x 11 inches
