Designing to bridge History and the Present

La Guirlande de Julie

The collaboration between Interior Architect Hubert de Givenchy (son of the fashion designer) and POUENAT Ferronnier illustrates well how linking the past to the present can be made easier. For instance, you are given an assignment: your client asks you to re-design a restaurant in one of the most exquisite and visited squares in your city, asking you to add your touch while respecting the tradition of the location. Givenchy recently completed such a project on the XVIIth Century Place des Vosges in Paris. La “Guirlande de Julie” located under the arcades surrounding Place des Vosges, happens to be a “child” restaurant to the mother ship La Tour d’Argent –once a 3 Michelin Stars holder. In addition, La Guirlande de Julie has a history of nurturing romances and in the past, hosting political intrigues.

All those details made it a more complex task to re-design the restaurant. Wisely Hubert chose POUENAT Ferronnier to design and manufacture the lighting fixtures. With POUENAT, Hubert was able to select decorative elements that matched his vision and understand how far, he could take the POUENAT production tool. A totally newly designed set of lighting fixtures was decided. The Guirlande de Julie chandeliers include arrangements of intertwined leaves -an evocation of the XVIIth century poems written to Julie by her artist and aristocrat admirers and each based on a flower, and the guirlande being the collection of those poems. The chandelier’s frame seems a copy of the plaster moldings. The lights are displayed inline… The final result is an elegant bird-like cage, with the material of the cage being subtly finished to match the roughness of the floor’s stone as well as the sophistication of the marble and the gilding on the walls. Hubert de Givenchy found in POUENAT Ferronnier a partner able to understand, interpret and produce according to his own vision and plan.

No wonder Brigitte Saby recommended POUENAT to Hubert. Brigitte Saby was among the very first to bring style back into Russia. She did so with such success that the American business press kept quoting her when commenting on the evolution of taste in Russia: NEW YORK TIMES – July 13th, 2006; INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE –July, 15th, 2006. So follow her recommendation and visit POUENAT at “Maison France!”

Anne-Pierre de Peyronnet
Editor
SHIRALY,s.a.r.l.