Inside Antoinette Poisson’s 17th century Breton house

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When Vincent Farelly and Jean-Baptiste Martin of the Parisian design studio Antoinette Poisson Although they first traveled to Port-Louis, Brittany, three years ago, they had no intention of moving. Both paper curators, known for reviving centuries-old printing techniques, had been informed about the sale of a historic house by a customer at their shop on Rue Saint-Sabin. The visitor arrived with the 2015 book by the architect Gérard Dieul Le Port-Louis I revisitedwhich features a domino paper image on the cover – the same wallpaper, printed and hand-painted on French rag paper, that the couple had worked over the past decade to bring back to life.

Intrigued, the duo took a three-hour train ride from Paris and found themselves in a maritime city that was once a center of trade for decorative items. They arrived at a modest Breton house with blue shutters, its double windows and stone façade protecting it from the harsh Atlantic elements, and they were instantly smitten. It was, coincidentally, Valentine’s Day. “It’s strange to visit a house when you don’t know the owner,” Martin says of his meeting with the retired journalist and photographer who had lived there for 20 years. “We feel like we’ve stepped into an untouched relic of the 18th century.”

We didn’t want to change anything until we really understood the house.

Less than a year later, Maison Lescop, named after the French East India Company seafaring merchant who built it in 1670, was his. “Not a great inside like a castle. It’s comfortable, understated and totally charming,” says Martin, who likens the symmetrical design, with double-aspect rooms jutting out from a central artery, to that of a doll’s house. With chestnut paneled walls, contrasted with more refined Louis XV style doors, the house has an atmosphere of rusticity and warmth.

At first the couple, who met at the Sorbonne in Paris and later worked together as restorers and conservators, simply lived in space. “We didn’t want to change anything until we really understood the house,” Martin recalls. As they entertained and cooked for visiting friends and family, they quickly discovered that it was the kitchen that needed their attention most urgently: a major task. The original maze of spaces had been converted into a garage in the 1950s, then divided into a quartet of rooms.

Harnessing the skill of local carpenters and with the help of an interior designer they had met during a workshop project at the Palace of Versailles, they began removing the modern partitions to restore the room’s earlier, more palatial scale. Drawing on the facades of an original cabinet found in the living room, they created a space with open shelving and oak tops painted in a creamy off-white color specially developed by the French paint company. Resource Paints, which is now filled with the couple’s collection of antique copper pots, pans and ramekins, and a matching burnished sink. True to their cabinetry source, there’s not a jagged edge in sight and today comes to life against the rich patina of the massive antique pantry table.

His next move was to convert a bathroom off the kitchen into a gorgeous guest room, adorned with the special tapestry of Aubusson greenery that first inspired Antoinette’s Joli Bois (Pretty Wood) textile, wallpaper, and scenic scent. Poisson. Evoking a hunting scene from the time of their company’s namesake, the great patron of the arts Madame de Pompadour, née Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, this jungle background prompted one of the couple’s most dramatic Breton interventions: the pictorial vestibule . The fantastical forest landscape is hand drawn and gouache painted, largely by Farelly, in five shades of green. Created along the lines of a theater set, it covers the entire hall, giving way to the kitchen and living room, and creating a sense of harmony with the natural world that surrounds the house.

In contrast, Antoinette Poisson’s wallpaper designs take center stage above. In the “yellow bedroom,” the duo’s debut rococo design, Guirlandes de Fleurs, is contrasted against the dark mahogany of a tombeau packed with their collection of Provençal quilts, also known as pique marseillaises, which will inform their upcoming illustrative and form collections. more free. . Elsewhere, a duchess four-poster bed artfully fashioned from an indigo-dyed hemp sheet is supported by a hanging textile headboard. Across the landing from the “love room,” created for the young daughters of the home’s second owner, is an alcove adorned with ornate moldings of a cornucopia and bow and arrow. Decorated in soft pink and with views of the nearby sea, this is a place to think and be inspired.

Rather than overload the interior with its extensive collection of antique furniture and artifacts, the couple’s approach has been to pare things down. “It’s more about the soul of each piece, its history and patina,” explains Martin. “We’ve held on to these 18th-century objects that are very rustic, very simple, and very beautiful.” The couple like to change things up according to the seasons: in winter, they add an antique screen and Louis XV-style armchairs to bring more comfort to the living room.

Maison Lescop is a place full of surprises, including the ode to salty air and high water that the couple have created in the alcove by the back door. This miniature maritime museum, or chapel of the sea, is packed with memorabilia, family photos, postcards and devotional items. Painted in an aquatic blue-grey hue the Bretons call glaz, and with its own ship’s porthole, it’s a treasure trove of marine miscellany.

At first, Farelly and Martin planned to stay at Maison Lescop over long weekends. But little by little their lives have moved almost completely to Brittany. “Life is very nice here,” says Martin. It’s a seasonal way of life, centered on culinary arts, crafts, and imagination, which is perfectly captured in his new book, A Year in the French Way: Interiors and Entertainment by Antoinette Poisson (to be published by Flammarion on September 19).

Today, along with her border collie Lili and her house rabbit Pompon, several members of Antoinette Poisson’s 11-person team have followed the designers to this cultured corner of the northwest coast. Close to home, they have set up a second workshop and studio in the attic of a former school, and earlier this summer they opened the doors of Port-Liberté Chez Antoinette Poisson, an interiors shop, tea room and restaurant, with a dining room for paying guests. Here, Martin enjoys the classic French culinary skills he inherited from his mother and his grandmother, and Farelly serves afternoon tea with a Breton twist at the lovely collection of tables. “Thanks to Maison Lescop, our lives are now very different,” she smiles. Her words are testament to the ability of the four walls we call home to shape us as powerfully and intangibly as the tides.