A Private Tour of Chateau Laurens: An Art Nouveau Masterpiece

[Music] welcome to the chatan in the beautiful town of AG in the south of France one of the most extraordinary art Novo Villas ever to be built as you enter please imagine that you've been invited to a party by your host Emmanuel lauron because that is what this house was a huge party pad for a young man who inherited his vast Fortune at the age of just 25 this entire Villa was completed before he reached the age of 30 and in it you can see his youth Flights of Fancy and an enus in mixing together styles from all over the world because Emmanuel was a great traveler and he brought back influences from everywhere he went you will see a lot of Japan of Asia of Egypt as we travel through these rooms I feel as though I'm in a painted Egyptian or Grecian Temple because we often forget that that's what those temples were like they were painted every single surface in just this way but we never see that these days when we go and visit them but stepping in here is like stepping back in time and also stepping into the mind of its creator Emmanuel created this not with famous artists and architects in fact there was no architect at all he designed this house himself he used his friends his friends who were artists and Craftsmen and together they made this magnificent flight of fancy [Music] admittedly maybe he should have use an architect because he didn't put much thought into the foundations of the house and when the restorers came to restore this it took many many years one of the major problems is that the foundations were crumbling and that's why this floor is rather undulating and it took six years of work just on the foundations before they could even start on restoring all of the Magnificent paint work it was a vast restoration process and they have decided to bring it back to the way it was when Emanuel had it made and so you see the colors in all of their Glory this room caused the restorers quite a lot of problems because there are gaps on the wall and they were thinking well what was there what what's the missing design what do we put there and then they discovered an original photo showing that the walls were actually covered in rugs and there was more furniture and they just didn't bother painting behind those bits which actually Philip discovered I did when he moved a wardrobe once and uh was saying no one does that why did you do that but I've been running out of paint and so I feel quite Vindicated actually but they've left the gaps because they haven't been able to find the original carpets that were once there but you have to imagine this room was very ottoman in fear Carpets on the walls many carpets covering the floors and cushions and this is where they would lie down there was even a huge curtain in front of it to make it feel a little more intimate [Music] we are standing in the lavish dining room which is like a fruit Laden Orchard and here you can really see the attention to detail that Emanuel and his designers and Painters and Craftsmen had even the door hinges actually in the shape of little snakes the doors would originally have been covered with beautiful toed leather work creating wonderful scenes but they've been lost and there are no archival photos from this room to show the restorers what they looked like so for the moment they can't replace them here you can see a radiator with a plate warmer in it and a lot of the patterns in this room were actually based on the designs found on this radiator if you look closely on top you will see that there are scallop shells which are then repeated in the wooden motifs on the paneling all the way around the room and on the sides of the radiator you get swirling FRS that continue either side of the lemon trees on the painted [Music] walls this exuberant mixture of styles leading to the extraordinary staircase Hall where you can see clearth atra on her Regal Throne which actually in itself shows what a play this place was because Cleopatra would never have been shown in ancient Egypt on a throne she would only have been shown standing because she was Pharaoh she didn't sit around but that didn't matter to Emmanuel and there she is enthroned looking up the stairs and to the pleasures Beyond because this was a house built entirely for pleasure and some of the photos that exist from that time show uel and his friends even the mayor of the town at the time lying around on sofas surrounded by half empty glasses of alcohol smoking opium [Music] upstairs Echoes the hall downstairs it's a vast reception area and the parties would continue up here though this enormous house only had three guest bedrooms so I think the guests were supposed to just party the night away and not bother going to sleep and during the parties can you imagine the view of the stars that you would get looking up through the roof light it floods the space with sun during the day but at night must have been equally magnificent this Hall contains many secret doors and now most of them were going to service areas to the rooms that the domestic used to cupboards but there is one here that was leading to a much more important room and that was Emmanuel's laboratory walking into this room is like stepping into vulcan's furnace it has this extraordin AR fireplace which actually isn't a chimney and nobody quite knows what it was for because it seems to have these three chimneys for Three Fires but in fact they link to each other but they don't link to any chimney or opening on the roof so no one really knows what this huge chimney piece was used for and if you look up to the ceiling it's as though the Flames are flickering across it there and there is a freeze depicting the Egyptian god Anubis and he the god that would take people through and guide them into the Afterlife so is that the theme going on in this room or is the theme perhaps rebirth because if you look at the shape of the door that I've just walked through it could be seen as a cocoon and that idea is given a little weight when you look at the windows that go onto the Terrace they're known as butterfly Windows you can see one of them is closed the other's being opened to show you that they open with a fixed middle and there though two two wings are opening out and one of the windows is slightly bigger than the other so they just fit together perfectly and when you step out onto the Terrace you see a huge window that is again in the shape of a butterfly this room was emanuel's laboratory and his Library Emmanuel had been a medical student when he at the age of 25 received his vast Fortune later in his life he was working on a thesis and electrical arcs and you can see an example of them here because there are several machines in this room that represent Emmanuel's interests the sort of experiments that he would have been doing in here I love these it feels like magic isn't that amazing the room is dominated by these vast and very beautiful windows and they look out onto a railway track you might think oh what a shame he built this beautiful mansion and then they spoiled it by building the railway no no the railway actually arrived here in the 1850s long before Emmanuel built this Mansion but in those days Railways were seen as a huge leap forward for mankind a vast technological innovation and quite a luxury Emanuel very specifically chose to look down onto the railway from his laboratory and if you look at the pattern on the Windows they could be read either as a beautiful sun with Rays coming out of it or it could be seen as the front of a steam engine with almost swirls of smoke puffing around it and in fact a family who knew Emmanuel came and told the people who were working on this restoration that he actually used to run alongside the train that had to go very very slowly here because it was in town and leap onto it so he could just hitch rides onto any trains that he wanted [Music] at the end of the beautiful Upstairs Hall you can glimpse into this little room which is directly between Emmanuel and his wife's bedrooms those are not open to the public at the moment but if you come this summer you may be lucky because they're currently working on his wife's room they've managed to buy back the original art noo furniture and we've been allowed a little peek and I can assure you it is going to be Splendid so if you're here this summer do come to look at that however we are going to be able to take you into Emmanuel's bedroom so you will get a sneak peek of that which you wouldn't usually get on the tour you can't come into this room either on the tour but you will be able to see it as you look down the pool and this is the room where the lovers would meet for breakfast or perhaps afternoon tea and they could go to straw on their Terrace together but before it became a little nest for the marital couple it was actually lived in by the painter the decorative painter who did all of the paint work here Jan D he was a friend of emanuel's he wasn't famous in his day he was actually just a house painter though he did go on to do other things once he'd done this and you can't believe that this is almost entirely the job of one decorative painter they believe he probably had some help but for the most part it was one man it was Ean and this is the room that he slept in whilst he was tackling this Monumental project we're going to see The View that they would have had stepping onto the Terrace this is not even full summer I can't imagine what it must be like then it is spectacular and as you can see it's almost like being at the top of an ancient Egyption Temple and this entire front section of the house is absolutely typical of the entire Mansion because it's a mixture of ancient Egyptian architecture and Grecian architecture and that's exactly what Emanuel was doing he was playing with all of these different styles these different influences that he saw on his Global travels and not caring what was supposed to go with what but just caring about his ultimate artistic Vision which I think is a Triumph next let's go and visit emanuel's upstairs bedroom because yes he had two we're in a room of the mansion that hasn't usually been visited before though it will be in a couple of months time this will be used for exhibitions of things like first edition books that have been found in the castle he and his wife had separate bedrooms and this was his and it's incredibly dramatic the meaning behind the wool paintings has been lost over time these are the paintings that were here and it almost seems that these beautiful flowers are coming out of slightly diabolical flames and stranger still the freeze going around the room is a bats he had his very own bat cave he would have had a magnificent bed but unfortunately it's been lost and they believed it was actually cut up and sold for the wood he also had his own bathroom just off here but there was a far more spectacular bathroom in this chatow that we'll be seeing later and now let's go back downstairs to the sanctum sanctorum of this Shadow we are walking into the inner sanctum Emmanuel's private apartment because although he had a bedroom and his wife had a bedroom in the main Castle this is where they actually lived that was almost more like the state areas of the castle where they would have parties where they would entertain but for daily life they were in this apartment and this is his study which is was dominated by a vast stained glass window that was originally exhibited at the great exhibition either in Paris or in Brussels no one's too sure but he saw it and he bought it and he built this room around it the stained glass window itself is all about the sea Emanuel obviously a great traveler very drawn to the Sea on one side you can see a ship on a stormy sea on the other side there is an old man looking out wistfully at the sea maybe remembering his days of travels or his days as a fisherman and in the center there is an evil looking mermaid about to steal a boy from his mother and at their feet you can see a body that maybe the husband we're not too sure but it's as though he is being called to the Sea so many men before him they're very lucky to have many of emanuel's original pieces of furniture in this room it's dominated by an enormous desk and like the other bits of furniture in the house it has an inlay of leather it almost looks like wood it's been tooled so perfectly to create in this case a Setting Sun scene but what I love is that you can see the old ink stains and the places where he's put his mug down all these little stains that Philip gets so cross with me when I do this to my desk at home but that I think show the traces of the life that was lived here he clearly couldn't afford any coasters [Music] and now we are stepping into one of the most intimate rooms and this is emanuel's bedroom and his bed is still here it is in fact the bed that he died in at the age of 86 still living in this apartment he lost his entire fortune in the financial crash in the 1920s and he sold the castle then but as a VI this is very unusual in other countries but in France used to be quite common and it's when somebody sells the castle to someone but they retain the right to live in it and they're given a lump sum on the sale and they given a little bit more money every year until their death that's what happened and he lived just in this apartment in the shadow until his death his bed survived because he had gifted it to the guardian of the Shadow at the time who only two years before the opening of The Shadow called and said oh by the way I have Emmanuel's bed do you want it and no one could believe it and it was obvious the moment they saw it this was indeed Emmanuel's bed and there's a real symbolic play going on in this room on the bed itself you can see the Setting Sun and in fact at the front there are poppies reminding us of OPM and sleep there is a woman fast asleep below the poppies but once they've gone to sleep we look over to this window which represents night and here you can see the cresant moon it's not very obvious during the day but apparently at night when everything is in darkness that Cresent Moon lights up and just shines into the space and there's also a sensuality here a sort of sedu Ive play between these white birch trees which are a symbol of femininity and then the sturdy Oak symbol of masculinity and this water that separates them but at the end of the night the sun rises and we have that in this window and all of the trees are behaving it's just a nice mixed cops the seduction of the night before has gone and the sunlight streams into the room you are now walking into the Jewel of this entire mansion and it's Emmanuel's bathroom and what is extraordinary is that this was an entirely private room but is possibly the most beautifully finished in the entire house it was famous even in its own day it was seen in many of the reviews of the period and it is still in beautiful order the entire room was built around this stained glass window and when the light touches this Rippling white glass it really looks as though the glacier is melting as the Rays of sun touch it and the melting Glacier forms into this pool and the water keeps falling down to the bottom and you can see it's watering magnificent vegetation and it feels almost as though that water continues along this Lush Mosaic floor and then down into surely one of the most romantic Parts in the world and there were all modons as you can see he even had an overhead shower but not only that it was hot and cold running water heating and electricity now these were very unusual things at the time electricity didn't arrive until the town of AG until the 1910s 1920s he had electricity here in 1901 when he was electrifying all of the beautiful chandeliers and he did that with his own generator in the garden using the water of the river his heating was under floor heating and there were events throughout the floors in the chatow and in Winter he had a huge wooden boiler in the cellar and that would create hot air that went through all of those vents but in summer part of the river would be deviated underneath the house so the cool water created by that could create a kind of air conditioning this house was way ahead of its time [Music] the [Music]

Channel: The Chateau Diaries

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Keywords: chateau de lalande, chateau diaries, chateau life, chateaux in france, chatelaine, dream chateau, escape to the chateau, escape to the chateau diy, french castles, french country home, french country house, french country living, historic house, life in a chateau, living in a castle today, living in a chateau, living in a french chateau, stately home, stephanie chateau, stephanie jarvis, stephanie jarvis chateau de la lande, the chateau diaries, escape to rural france

Id: Tx5BgDteJiU

Length: 20min 27sec (1227 seconds)

Published: Mon May 20 2024