Paris_ The Collected Traveler - Barrie Kerper [244]
Hôtel d’Angleterre (44 rue Jacob, 6ème / +33 01 42 60 16 93 / hotel-dangleterre.com).
Hôtel Duc de Saint-Simon (14 rue de Saint-Simon, 7ème / +33 01 45 48 68 25 / hotelducdesaintsimon.com).
Hôtel du Jeu de Paume (54 rue Saint-Louis-en-l’Île, 4ème / +33 01 43 26 14 18 / jeudepaumehotel.com).
Recommended Rental Agencies
À La Carte Paris (alacarteparis.com).
I Love Paris Apartments (iloveparisapartments.com).
Paris Appartements Services (paris-apts.com).
Paris Home Shares (parishomeshares.net).
Vacation in Paris (vacationinparis.com).
Antiques and Auction Houses
Paris has long been a great destination for antiques, and visitors who love antiques shopping will not be disappointed in one area in particular: in the streets of the sixth and seventh arrondissements. Big news in the auction house world came in 2000, when a monopoly restricting auction sales to French nationals was declared void. (Previously foreigners had to arrange for a French person to bid for them.) The monopoly had been established by a royal edict of Henri II in 1556, and in the four centuries since, London and the United States had outpaced Paris in sales, as well as in market savvy and diversification. Christie’s and Sotheby’s (both British firms) now have a presence in Paris, but the Hôtel Drouot (drouot.com) is Paris’s historic auction house, founded in 1852 and located on the corner of rue Drouot and rue Rossini in the ninth arrondissement; there are also salesrooms at 15 avenue Montaigne in the eighth, as well as at Drouot Nord and Drouot Véhicules (outside of the city). The house is actually an umbrella group now owned by a subsidiary of the bank BNP Paribas, with sixteen different halls and seventy independent auction firms, which can be intimidating indeed to would-be auction participants.
Antiques professionals, interior decorators, architects, casual collectors, or simply those interested in attending an auction or a flea market should contact Emily Marshall at Grotto Antiques tout de suite. Marshall is the only American to have earned a diploma from the famed École Boulle, a prestigious applied-arts school for the decorative arts in Paris. Named after Louis XIV’s cabinetmaker André-Charles Boulle, students of the school must have a thorough knowledge of the history of French furnishings and demonstrate proficiency in drafting and hand sewing to earn the Certificat d’Aptitude Professionnelle, or CAP, degree. Marshall prepared for the CAP by training for two years with Madame Catherine Bientz, a drapery-maker for the shah of Iran. École Boulle is highly selective; in 1995, the year she began at the school, only eighteen students were selected out of several hundred to attend. Since graduating, Marshall has created draperies for distinctive apartments in Paris and has continued to apprentice and train, acquiring professional techniques few, if any, other Americans know. In addition to operating Grotto Antiques (1399 East Tutt Road, Trenton, Kentucky / 615 430 5491 / grottoantiques.com) and specializing in haute couture for the home, Marshall and her husband offer an international antiques courier service in France. They also organize antiques shopping tours to the flea markets and auction houses, always negotiating for the best price.
Photo Credit bm1.9
Through a serendipitous saving of Marshall’s business card, nearly ten years after first meeting her I tracked her down, and we reconnected by telephone and e-mail.
Q: When did you first visit Paris, and what was it that inspired you to go?
A: I’d majored in anthropology and Brazilian Portuguese in college and had lived and worked in Brazil. When I was job hunting, I discovered the Austin Company, a tobacco agency based in Greeneville, Tennessee, that bought tobacco for domestic and foreign manufacturers and it had plants in Brazil, so I decided to explore job opportunities with them. I was hired as Austin’s first woman in the leaf department, which I was mainly responsible for buying at auction.
Photo Credit bm1.10
I’d work half