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By Root 1118 0

the year and travel for the rest. I went to London and Paris, where Austin’s second-largest customer, SEITA, the French tobacco monopoly, was based. So it seemed natural to inhale Gauloises and Gitanes sur place. Through family connections I was able to arrange a stay in a bohemian garret in the fifteenth, and Paris cast its spell. Once I returned to work, I began to scheme: how could I go back and stay longer? Austin gave me a year off to work on an MBA degree. I met a Parisian and fell in love—ironically his godfather headed up Philip Morris in Switzerland, one of Austin’s clients—and I said adieu to the tobacco business. I stayed in Paris until 2006, returning to the States only then to start Grotto Antiques with my second husband, Mehdi Zohouri.

Q: Were you always interested in antiques and textiles?

A: Looking back now as an older woman, I realize one should never underestimate the ability of a child’s eye to be educated and cultivated to appreciate beautiful and worldly things. I grew up on a rolling cattle and tobacco farm in the middle of Tennessee, but foreign influences blew regularly in and out. My father was a sea captain, and his annual visit home would have him loaded down with silk from India and Egypt, ebony from Africa, and lacquerware from the Orient. My favorite uncle, Jim Beaumont Marshall, was a career State Department employee and traveled the world. His keen eye and own fascination with textiles initiated me to the world of Indonesian ikat, Suzani embroidery, and Indian silks. I’m sure the textile bug comes from him. Also, a woman named Dorothy Ann Ross Russo was a great influence—she’d spent her junior year abroad studying at the Sorbonne, and her home had mysterious escargots and freshly baked French-style bread. She read us Babar in French. I’d sip coffee with her artist husband, Remo, in their kitchen nook and quiz her on those buildings taped to the wall: Chinon, Chenonceau, and Blois. I see those black-and-white prints even now; I was seven at the time.

I started sewing at six. Both my grandmothers did beautiful work and my mother made her own Vogue Paris Originals during the early sixties. By twelve, I could make most anything, and in my teens, I could make coats interlined and lined. When I was nineteen I had a job in Washington, D.C., working for a gift shop, where I learned of Cristal d’Arc, Limoges china, and Quimper ware. The back area had French fabric, and on my breaks I would drool over the material. So my eye developed in America, but it was École Boulle’s Histoire de l’Ameublement Français (History of French Furniture) course that ignited the passion for French antiques, textiles, and decoration.

Q: You are the only American to ever attend Paris’s prestigious École Boulle. What transpired that made you want to apply for admission?

A: A terrible French divorce! Did you see the film Le Divorce, based on Diane Johnson’s book? Leslie Caron is nothing compared to my ex-belle-mère. Sewing calms my nerves and was a channel to relieve a whole lot of stress. But more officially, I was thumbing through a catalog of adult courses offered by the Mairie de Paris (mayor’s office) and I stumbled upon the heading Tapisserie d’ameublement, and it got me thinking that I wanted to learn soft furnishing techniques. Later, when I sent in the application to the École Boulle, I was selected out of hundreds of candidates.

Courses at École Boulle include French, physics, industrial and hand sewing, technology, drawing, cutting patterns and draping, and the history of French furniture and architecture. Each subject has a coefficient. Meaning if you’re not so hot in French (coefficient 2), you’ll make up points with the sewing project (coefficient 10). Just don’t make a zero in a subject: no diploma will be awarded. I became passionate for French antiques in the History of French Furniture class. Working chronologically, we worked our way up through the styles, starting with the Romanesque. It wasn’t just furniture but the architecture and fabric associated with each period. I made up flash cards scrambling