BELLAS ARTES

How do you make your home come alive with personality, charm, and memory? In the introduction to Sean Scherer’s first book, Kabinett & Kammer: Creating Authentic Interiors, Anderson Cooper writes, “Scherer has a unique ability to place otherwise ordinary objects in a completely unexpected context or grouping and in so doing change the way you see them.” In Sean Scherer’s Vignettes, Scherer focuses in on the art of combining common objects into aesthetically pleasing groupings, or vignettes. Contending that a vignette can set the whole mood and tone of a room, he shows you how to use any surface in your home, from a tabletop to a bookshelf to a wall, to create lively displays of your favorite items. Beautifully illustrated with Scherer’s own photographs, the book demonstrates how to balance color, texture, and shape, and provides lessons on how to create both symmetrical and asymmetrical vignettes.

This comprehensive monograph is an exclusive look inside the château that inspired the design of Versailles and today continues to enchant visitors and film directors alike. Vaux-le-Vicomte’s rich history began in 1641 when infamous French finance minister Nicolas Fouquet, the original owner, surrounded himself with the most skilled and talented artisans of the time: the architect Louis Le Vau, the painter Charles Le Brun, and the garden designer André Le Nôtre, to create a perfect harmony between architecture and landscape. The Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte and its spectacular gardens fascinated Louis XIV and were the inspira­tion for Versailles. Classified as a historical monument since 1875 under the impetus of the owner at the time, the castle of Vaux-le-Vicomte quickly became a model of the artistic genius of the seventeenth century. This volume traces the château’s history from the seventeenth century through the Belle Époque, World War I, and its public opening in 1968. Exclu­sive photography and archival documents offer unprecedented access to the château, furnishings, and gardens, and illuminate the extraordinary secrets of court life and centuries of celebrations that include the enchanting candlelit tours held today.

Julia Morgan was truly a pioneer of her time—among other accomplishments, she was the first woman architect to be licensed in California, in 1904. Through her remarkable life and legacy, this book celebrates the Beaux-Arts architecture of California. Focusing on Morgan’s most famous project in the state, Hearst Castle, to which she devoted more than 30 years of her life, this volume also examines, for the first time, Morgan’s fabulous early buildings in the style. Morgan designed more than 700 buildings across California, many of which are designated landmarks today. Deepening the reader’s understanding of California archi-tecture, this book also places into context Morgan’s ambitions, her influences and inspirations, as well as her daily practice and challenges as a woman shaping an extraordinarily prolific and highly successful career in a man’s world. To better understand the Beaux-Arts training Morgan underwent in Paris, the reader is taken through the challenging, highly arduous Ecole des Beaux-Arts curriculum, which Morgan completed, a lone woman among men. Also explored, in detail, is the story of how the studio and kilns of California Faience, a Berkeley ceramic artisan’s shop, became the supplier of tens of thousands of tiles designed by Morgan and overseen by Hearst himself to decorate their architectural master-piece overlooking the Pacific Ocean.