CLASSIC FRENCH INTERIOR DESIGN AT LA MIRANDE!

[Music] hi i'm stephanie and this is my home the 16th century chateau de la land la land was owned for hundreds of years by a family of marquis who were at the heart of french royal life one of them even had the honor of being sent by king louis xv to greet marie antoinette on her arrival in france but far from being a stuffy museum this chateau is a living home i live here all the time and i'm regularly joined by my mother my family my friends and wonderful volunteers from all over the world who helped me to lovingly restore this historic home welcome to la land a chateau filled with life love and laughter hello and welcome to sundays at the chateau where today you will notice we are not at the chateau de la land because this is a video that i've been very very excited to make for years i'm finally going to be able to share my favorite hotel in france with you it's called la miranda and we're in the beautiful city of avignon in the south of france it's a very ancient city dominated by the world's largest gothic palace which was once home to seven popes when the papacy moved here from rome for nearly a hundred years in the 14th century during that time this building was the palace of the cardinal and it used to host sumptuous banquets for over a hundred guests with trumpeters heralding in the arrival of the food and fountains of wine the beautiful facade was added in the 17th century but behind that unified front all of the rooms were being changed bit by bit over the centuries and most had been stripped of their original decoration by the time akim and hannah law stein a german couple bought this beautiful building to bring it back to life in 1987. and today i have the enormous pleasure of having a private tour around the hotel with their son martin stein who abandoned medicine to devote his life to the restoration of this historic monument this hotel encapsulates for me everything that a hotel should be because it transports you not only to another place but to another time to another way of seeing the world to another way of living welcome to la miranda [Music] so so i'm very excited to meet you this is mr stein who is the owner of this hotel and you actually did a lot of the design work here yes yes i had a very talented then young interior architect from paris the steins worked with the distinguished french interior designer francois joseph graf who's even been an architect at the chateau de versailles he produced the initial designs for the transformation of this building and martin rose to the challenge of taking those initial designs and turning them into technical drawings for local craftsmen if you add them all together there must be one kilometer of wood paneling which i have designed so you have to always it's interesting you have to to see how to distribute the big pencils the small panels yes when when these when the card goes out of the offices which goes in i didn't know that it was a bit well i've learned something new today when you start you have to think how much corn card and how much pt card i take the less you put in the larger they are and so to give them the right the right fee of proportion we very much visited as a you need to take the exact measurements you see you have here a good example of the of the 17th or 18th century um molding molding and the carpenter would say well you don't you don't need to do that because it's as beautiful if you go straight here and you don't have to go in here because it's because that will make it much more difficult to make that yes and also because there's a lot of paint on these when you go in an old house and they say well look it's it's there's nothing there we can we make it straight but then you when you start to scratch it and you take out all the paint you see that you realize that i was much more nervous these things which we did and we gave the cabinet the exact form it should have so they could not cheat it's really yes um the old way it's beautiful it took us three years roughly to do this to do this transformation but later on we added we we finished other things later but uh the beginning to open the hotel was three years off i'm honestly so ashamed when i think that i've been at la land for 15 years and what you've done here is so beautiful i was speechless when i came in because i absolutely believed that it had looked pretty much like that since the 18th century with you adding lovely curtains and furniture and paper but it didn't did it this room was not decorated because it was the cabinet of a doctor yes the oldest son was physician who would inherit everything so so but rules changed in the 20th century so there were two two two sons both doctors who shared the place and um and one had this cabinet here and it was white tiles and so we had to completely re-decorate the place this room was just white tiles i can't so from the ceiling to the floor everything has been brought in 30 years ago so it's um an example of how you can still recreate these ambiences if you have the right craftmans to to do it and if you have the vision well sometimes if you have one beautiful things and it's like like these things so then it's from this is the starting you need a starting point you need something to start from wallpaper is from probably sift 1750 so it's quite early in the 18th century um made in china and but the chinese made them for the european taste they were made for exports so and they knew how to make these big layers of paper it was painted and we could buy these 15 panels from an antique dealer in paris and then the mr graph was the interior architect he designed the room around these panels and we could fix them all in we didn't we would just lose one here in this corner here's also but it's still there it's behind because there's a lot of space behind another two heights so you're able to save the people to use it in the future missing a little bit there and that's where this little tiny part was added which i'd never noticed and i've spent quite a lot of time sitting in this room i always said it would be impossible for me to to build a beautiful house from scratch if you give it just you just just give a piece of land and i wouldn't know how how to do it because there's not too much choice to do it so that's better to if you have an existing house and you have a lot of content as they say in french then you have to you have to work around these um my father always said that constraints uh feed the imagination and help creativity but you need constraints to be creative it's wonderful and to think that all of this was put in 30 years ago all of the moldings another thing was interesting is the idea of the audio of mr graph was to use fabrics the reverse side to give them a sort of shabby aspect as if it has been they're already not exposed to the sun there for a long time this is the wrong side of the if you turn it around it's it's a different fabric oh yes very interesting easier it's a much more lively color but as it has been used reverse side but that's also the reverse yeah on this sofa you see just how powerful it can be to use the reverse side of a fabric here the little cushion is the right side and the rest of the sofa is done in the wrong side something which i'm very passionate about is floors and what they fray in french say calpinaj i don't know makes a plan of the floor every single piece can have decided about what the size should be and where it should be exactly in order to that the floor speaks with the doors and the walls it's a sort of combination between these what attention to detail we have in france we have a lot of materials yeah when they tear down beautiful old houses unfortunately they call these people and they go in and they take everything out which is interesting architectural salvage we call that yesterday etc so we had a lot of flaws from architectural salvage which we used which we weren't really sure if we would uh we use it but we had them yes we could dispose of that so so all the flaws you see here architectural cell salvage floors so this is an example of cement tiles yes which are which are very efficient i mean to to create something interesting we did take out all the oak arcades yes but they're numbered one one by one you have the crackings out because they're not put directly on the concrete floor but there's some little beams which carry them as they would have been before yeah elasticity which you don't have yes yes and the noise it's important as well to make you feel you're in an old building [Music] it's so coherent you use the word coherence and to me that's the best description because you absolutely feel as though you're stepping into the 18th century into a building that was all planned in one single moment but in fact this was built over many hundreds of years wasn't it yes they have asked the city if they could step onto the public ground to build the facade in 1688 in front of existing buildings so they didn't tear down anything behind it just just to give it gave it a sort of coherent aspect towards outside but inside it was there was no right eye there was no right angle inside all rooms all walls would go in different directions so we and also you had to use a lot of steps to go from one room to the other because all these different buildings behind the facade were from different periods and have been rebuilt from the ruins of the cardinals palace which was here in the 14th century how did you manage to fix all of that how did you make it feel so square and straight and elegant well if you have a room which is a trap trap pads trapeze like that then we would we would put a wall we would lose some surface because we would put a wall in here to make it square yes or rectangular so there's little there's little space so then you find something yeah and you can put a little wardrobe in the little space or niches to another you can put the gal cover a little bit in the apartment which is not straight yes which they always did because it was very expensive to tear everything down and to start from scratch so they used what was pre-existing symmetry very important in the 18th century if you have a door on the right side which you have to have because to go somewhere you have to put a fake one on the other side so the room would keep and you've done that in room 24. because there's a door that's not a real door opposite the one to the bathroom in our bedroom mummy yes yes in our bedroom this entire door is false well the door is real but it's not leading anywhere it's leading to just a boarded up bit of wall and it's in order to have the symmetry with the door opposite which was originally here and which leads to the bathroom you can see the same technique used to great effect in bedroom 28. that's the door through which we came into the room and behind me you'll see there's an another door because in the 18th century in france rooms are always made symmetrical where there was one door there was another door in the same place on the other side but this building wasn't at all symmetrical when the steins bought because it's been added to and changed over the years just as la land has been there was not one single right angle in the entire place there was no symmetry and they ingeniously put the symmetry back into the building this is an entirely fake door now for people to go to the effort of all of this paneling all of this carpentry all of this design work just to make a fake door to add symmetry to a room it's just an incredible eye for detail so when you come in you sense that you've just stepped back in time you've walked into a guest room in somebody's home in their palace in the 18th century it's a magical feeling it's hard to describe the effect that all of this work behind the scenes has on the emotions that you feel in the room there's a time travel that happens because of work like this and other than the doors that are used for symmetry to match the existing doors all other doors are hidden jib doors covered in fabric and with the paneling continuing in front of them sometimes you enter the you enter the room through the bay which is i don't know what's the english word for that it's not the hidden hidden hidden doors which is close it disappears yes so we were wondering if guests when they would use this room coming late at night not really realizing what they did to get into the room but to call us in the next morning on telephones that we can we cannot open we cannot open the door to get out and that's how you keep guests you enter the room through a hidden jib door with the paneling continuing across it and the wonderful fabric continuing and the two main doors in the room one leads to the bathroom and the other is false there is such attention to detail to make the rooms look original it's perfect it's mind-blowing and i love these i absolutely love these it feels as though you're going into narnia i'm still here something i was very struck by was the way you have hung paintings because all of us mummy and hanny who's with us we've been saying that we're noticing individual paintings more rather than seeing them as uh part of a decorative hole because they're often closer to eye level for us because we're quite short as well and they're hanging a little bit lower here and so often i'll turn in a corridor and i'll suddenly see a really fascinating engraving for example right next to me and is it you who decided how to hang the paintings that's my speciality also framing things and i'm using your i'm also using the old glass for which it thinks it's very important old old glass oh really is it because if you have these windows with old glasses sometimes somehow alive yeah when you when you look from outside it's sort of shivering and if you look from inside you have a little bit of um the landscape or the building opposite is a little bit moving while you're when you move like that so it's all the new windows have always been equipped with with old glass how did you get the old glass you can you can still buy it which is it's still produced in france it's a manufacturer of that i didn't know that 30 years ago we have made them come from germany because i didn't know that they were also existing and much better in france and because the german glass is a bit too exaggerated it's i always say they they do it with the old technique but they they make them as unperfect as possible they well in the 18th century they use the same technique but they would make them as perfect yes they wanted it to be perfect so it's very thin and beautiful so i prefer to buy old glass from when i go to antique fairs like popcorn you can find engravings which are which is all completely rotten because we had got water on it religiously and the frames are eaten up and nobody wants to buy that but the glasses the when i buy a beautiful engraving and there's modern glass on it take the modern glass out put all the glass on it so it's not amazing i would never never have thought of it you will certainly adopt that if you see the difference between what does an old class make with compared to new glasses well i'm going to try because really i've been so struck by all of the art but also in the windows i noticed it um especially in the upstairs corridor when you're looking down onto the internal sort of patio area we talked about the old class you see all this i i have all these um paintings from kofi my own that he painted end of the 19th century beginning of the 20th century um they think nothing was framed so from there on i started to to think about the out of framing and uh so when i find old frames also on the on the on the broken or antique where they buy them this is a reproduction which is of one of his most successful paintings you have the original sketch for it wonderful it's fascinating because you really see his process yes and so this is the old glass that you're using to frame things i don't know how well it's going to come across on the video but it's yeah there's too much reflection almost to see it on the video it's wonderful actually you can see it yes yes it is moving it does bring life to them [Music] you can see very strong or bad yes strong there's a shimmering quality to the glass oh there's another woman on a donkey yeah she's really charming but that's what i love here in every tiny corner there's something to look at a lot of people wouldn't have put anything in that corner it's such a tiny little space and it's beautiful because you always find things to catch the eye i don't know what it is about that painting but i think that's my favorite painting in the entire place but it's more to do with its placement there's something about it against that wallpaper i don't know what but i spent a lot of time here last night by myself staring at the painting it's harris knight it's an english painter this is his wife she was much more famous laura knight it's very well known in england for paintings and she was her husband in this room there's another beautiful example of martin's fascinating way of hanging paintings they're just directly above the antique commode far lower than eye level and somehow the fact that they're not where you would expect them to be means that you stop and you take the time to look at them i think if they had just been on the wall i would have seen it as part of the wall but here i've really looked at this wonderful man with his strange little beak it's incredible you see the beauty of things that you would otherwise walk straight past and details like this are found throughout this hotel because here it's really about the details i think that as you come in everything that your eye rests on has been thought through with perfection in mind nothing is thrown away nothing is left to chance the entire home has been done by the eye of a genius one of the extraordinary things in lamiahand is that the corridors are as evocative and beautiful as the bedrooms they all look down onto a huge central patio area and they're wallpapered in the most glorious way but then there are flashes of color here and there with painted walls and there's art hanging everywhere and everything is worth stopping at and taking a closer look at and i love the way the light pours in through the windows and creates wonderful patterns on the floor really just spending time in the corridor here is a joy this is just a small section of the corridor and this area has been painted purple and i think it's one of my favorite wall scapes if that's a word one of my favorite views in the entire building because i love the gold and the engravings and this candelabra against the purple it works so well and this is certainly something that i will be copying at la land because this is something that would be very easy to do in one's own home you just need a tin of paint and some engravings i mean i don't have any quite this beautiful but i do have nice old engravings that i've been collecting and i'll find a candelabra this is something that it's quite easy to do at home to reproduce this it's opulent the color feels very opulent especially with the gold and yet it has extraordinary simplicity to it as well and here and there there are little cabinets bringing together collections of objects look at that work with the women and i love in this room that you've had this incredibly strongly geometrical floor with these curtains yeah this is uh this is the car this is the interior decorator when it comes came to the end when we had to choose the fabrics and this is very much his input yes i think this is very successful this is the original fabric is different sometimes he did cut out parts from the fabric in order to create new fabrics really it's a big red flower normally so in order to create that you have to appear and here's the yeah here's the next one because it's missing there's missing the red flower just taken the stripe wow i had enough difficulty making my curtains without having to do that as well oh the attention to detail in the vestibule of the room you can see a trick that's been used throughout the hotel to great effect which is at the border of the fabric which in the bedroom has been used to edge and frame the walls and it's been used to frame the curtains in the vestibule has just been attached together repeatedly so there is a seam here a seam here a seam here a seam here a seam here to create a stripe so you have the same fabric but a different way of using it which means that although it's unified each area is slightly different so it makes it much much richer here's another example of how to produce a new fabric from the main fabric using the sewing together all the borders in order to make to make a smaller size smaller size pattern for the engines yes and somebody has done an absolutely beautiful job of those lines yes a bit like my work oh when you buy them you have the full pattern and on one side you have the border so you can yes you can cut off the border you can use it you can use your border as a stripe which comes from time to time or you can or you can use the board in order to frame one of the panels this i love framing framing the wall like that there was a lot of more fabric needed to have all the borders because yes also it's it's made with it's made yes you're using more border than fabric yeah very beautiful and where is this fabric from this is which then was was still independent but now this is one of the favorite rooms of our guests because it is quite big it has the sunshine coming in in the morning and to taste some just beautifully into the garden it has everything you see the beautiful mirror it's so cool the floor of the bathroom so these encaustic cement tiles yes i love those and lovely wallpapers these are also old wallpapers we edited because they have distilled stuff they will do with blocks which is a technique which is from the early 19th century it's not 18th century so but as the bathrooms are not really representative of the 18th century that didn't exist in that right so we we tried to give it a sort of benefit very clock feel but using these wallpapers which would would somehow be the bridges to the room this is room number 22 which is covered in a replica of an 18th century fabric oh my goodness this is another way to use the border you see the main motif is there then you have the salted stripe it's nice because you can use for two rooms something which is from the same family the smaller stripe has been used to frame this one here this is a very interesting tributary or in the end they tried to imitate silk because it has this moire effect which you usually only get with silk they have this little shivering effect which was on the design of the fab that's the fabric was the top layer of extremely expensive um silk silk fabric it's fascinating that they wanted to reproduce the effect of silk like that i'm learning a lot about the use of borders especially the curtains which is odd because generally i bore a vacuum i like color on everything but this is just perfect oh and the small board has been used along the top as well and i love the way you created alcoves in order to create couples exactly but it's such a beautiful and intelligent way of creating space it really is lovely because the windows are not symmetrical but they're not in the not in the accent no so that's right so you cut off a part of the video my goodness i hadn't seen the wool paper in the bathroom one has to do the whole thing they offered us almost offered it just because they had both left over yes which went from money it works so well it is incredible i can honestly say i also i mean i've seen them only wallpapers like this and i've never considered that i would use them but i think i'm going to now because i like it so much yeah but and i love the way that there is continuity in on the planet throughout the world yes i love the fact that it's so unified exactly look at the view from the bath the pali de papa oh inspiring yes it is yes different from all the other rooms because it's more it says more elements from the 19th century in the early 20th century we're edwardian here we've suddenly moved forward in time yes we know the fabric is also interesting because it's something which is not from the 18th century it's 19th century when when they came back into fashion with napoleon the third and his wife especially she was very much um she really discovered the 12 degree and so they started back and you started to get to create new new fabrics which uh this is one of them but actually the name of the fabric is napoleon dessert yes for me it looks like a room in an english country house it looks like one of the bedrooms in yes somebody's country house that they've had for years and each bedroom has slightly different furniture because they've been collecting it as a family for generations eclectic and i do love that yes yes and again the over doors are great can we look at the bathroom in this one thanks oh it's delightful and all of the lose in the hotel are hidden away behind secret doors so that the bathrooms are left for bathing this is room number 28 and i think it's my favorite room because i'm a lover of pattern and color and it's very hard here to choose a favorite room because they are all so exquisite but look at this black in year fabric it is magnificent it is an 18th century design from france but here you can really see the influence of the indian fabrics that the french were emulating this is absolutely a spectacular indian style print if any of you are interested to learn more about the great history of twirls in france i will put a link to my vlog about it here when the factory injury closed down in 1843 brackeniere bought all of the copper plates and the designs so thankfully many of them are still available today the way that patterns are mixed together is very very clever because everything marries well even though the patterns are very different but somehow the colors and this of course is still heavily influenced from india this is a paisley design it just all flows together and i love the way that the border has been used as it is in so many rooms here not just to frame each section of wall but also to edge the curtains isn't that beautiful and in the alco they've created this wonderful window seat okay mommy i'll i'll just spend uh an hour or two here meet you later no i don't think i'm gonna get away with that okay the light switches are also very clever they're very simple brass push buttons but they have a perspex plate to protect the fabric there's a very simple wallpaper with a tiny sprig of flowers being repeated here which is a wonderful balance to the exuberant pattern in the bedroom and the bathroom continues this way and the use of a large sheet of mirror means it looks as though it continues far more and hello my lovely camera woman this beautiful room is number 29. here the cushion is made out of the same fabric as the fabric on the walls it's strange because you would think that two large bold prints would really clash with one another but in fact putting it on that chair just creates this symphony of color and pattern all of the bedrooms have writing desks and who wouldn't want to sit here and write a proper letter to loved ones back at home and here is a marbled effect on the wallpaper every bathroom is a jewel box and this bedroom is a perfect example of different patterns working together there's the marbled pattern in the bathroom then a very fine purple stripe in the hall the exuberant wonderful fabric in the bedroom and just behind me in the loo there's an elegant 19th century wallpaper and everything marries together perfectly it is wonderful that your family breathed new life into it and put such beauty into this building yes which will last for hundreds of years absolutely it's a lot of things things to do still whenever i i see you start looking since with fresh eyes but i see a lot of things which still need to be improved and just when you've been seduced by the interior thinking there can be nothing more beautiful in the world you see the view straight onto the pallidipap through the slightly shimmering ancient glass imagine waking up here ordering room service and having breakfast just next to the palais de pap whilst thinking hmm what shall i do today what should i visit in avignon which antique shops shall i go to and after a day of exploring the beautiful city and the surrounding areas there awaits the joy of coming back to la miranda perhaps for a drink in its stunning bar mummy do you see this beautiful print of pine cones i actually have a fragment of this fabric back at la land because i once found some it was selling an offcut and it's in the blue and white colorway with red pine cones i think and i've never seen it used in a room before in here it's in the walls of the bar covering the entire bar it's so pretty so as soon as we get home we must find that fabric and find somewhere beautiful to put it and these two rooms still have the beautiful platform a la francaise with lamborghini and each piece of wood is decorated and i want to do this when we get back to the grand salon but i'm waiting until i've managed to find some beautiful paneling for the walls so that i can make sure that we then decorate the ceiling in the same style by using what looks like an 18th century bed alcove to create the bar they've managed to create something fundamentally very modern but that doesn't look in any way out of place in this room it's ingenious and once you have a delicious cocktail you can take it through to the red salon this room is always kept darker than the others i think because it is naturally a darker room there are only internal windows there are no external windows and instead of fighting that by trying to make it as light as possible they've embraced it and they've made it this wonderful atmospheric room even the chandelier is kept constantly at a dim light it's beautiful it just sparkles at all hours of the day i can't describe how romantic and peaceful it feels especially after a day exploring the markets and the beautiful sights and the bright avignon sunshine to walk in here and have this refuge is just perfect after cocktails there's a choice of where to have dinner you could go to their beautiful michelin-starred restaurant where you could find yourself dining next to this 17th century brussels tapestry the michelin guide writes these fine and tasty dishes extol the south of france the produce of its land and its traditions delicious food in an elegant setting or you can venture down to the basement to the remains of the 14th century cardinals home and here there is still the original kitchen diners here usually eat all together around that table but because of covert at the moment the tables have been set around the rest of the basement extraordinarily this cooker is 150 years old and they are still using it today and you can see as we get closer that the fire is lit there are flames in there you can see that it's lit [Music] they do their cooking on the wood-fired stove i know how much work that is from the one that we have at la land he's going down into the bowls of the building to the cafe [Music] oh and it smells so nice smells like a cat wow yeah it's a real cat you know oh i love it these are the wines for drinking now and these are the ones set aside they're all labeled with the dates we are in the area that in the cardinals house would have been a courtyard and through here under these arches where the stables so we're going to go and eat next to the stables tonight cheers and after a huge dinner with local chateauneuf-du-pap wines it's time to retire to our bedroom this is the room that i'm sharing with my mother and i can honestly say i can think of nowhere in the world i would rather be right now well sadly it's time for us to leave lamiahand now to return to la land but i'm returning filled with inspiration with so many ideas for things that i can do back at home and it's given me really a renewed enthusiasm and that's what the wonderful thing about coming to hotels like this is that you're not just going on holiday to see the local area but really the place that you're staying gives you new inspiration for your own life and you can't ask for more than that from a hotel a huge thank you to all of our patrons at la land who are making this vlog possible especially our duffer and dauphine of la land jaedel and ether alice allen anna brandon and john michael daniela dan banda lauren barnes vince barone denise behrens linda c bradley veronica castillo zoe dork sakura dennis jackie ellison nicholas w fairfax tracy ferrari l fine caroline first to brenda gibbons abigail grant brenda harris delane holbrook kim hasselhoff david and tong henderson jacqueline holmes helen jacobs jimmy kemp david and summer la land victoria lepine janet huff lombard frank martin kim matlock meredith nina messick robert miller kathy nuri jc award mp maureen palmer tamara price tonya renee yvonne and peter richards rjb bettina roject hani ross elizabeth scanlan sven schreiber lisa schultz jennifer shanks patty suhu susan stevens jenny stevenson sarah thornton colleen troyer jessica walker brandi walton laura watkins greg wood david young and ludovico zodonatzo and thank you to all of you [Music] you

Channel: The Chateau Diaries

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Keywords: chateau de lalande, chateau diaries, chateau life, chateaux in france, chatelaine, 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, stephanie jarvis, the chateau diaries, chateau, chateau renovation, escape to chateau, la Mirande, avignon, hotel tour, French interiors, French interior design, 18th century

Id: 5Xge4aYZA20

Length: 42min 51sec (2571 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 13 2020