Hidden in the 11th

Last week I spent four magnificent days in Paris with my twin sister, Audrey. What a lucky pleasure! Not only did we get to reconnect, we got to do it in Parisian style. We ate quiche and salad, steak tartar, oeufs and mayonnaise. And we drank lots of provencal roses.

On my list of must-do’s was to visit the design studio and show room of the textile house, Antoinette Poisson. Walking down a quiet street in the 11th, I thought we had the wrong address, when Audrey figured out it was tucked away in a hidden courtyard. Behind two grand wooden doors we found chez Antoinette Poisson.

I designed this simple chest of drawers below with fabric from Antoinette Poisson last Spring. The basketweave print is a ‘trompe l’0eil’, an optical illusion. It looks like an actual woven piece of wicker furniture but in fact it’s a two dimensional flat piece of fabric. This chest of drawers is for sale here on my website.

Antoinette Poisson launched in 2012, which makes them a young textile house. The founders, Jean-Baptiste Martin and Vincent Farelly, are two wallpaper conservators who discovered Domino printing, an 18th century technique for producing original wallpaper, while restoring a house in Auvergne. “Dominos” are small–12″ x 16″–and are hand-painted with unusual designs. They’re often used to adorn small nooks and crannies, closet walls, the bottoms of drawers, and the inside covers of books.

The domino papers produced by Antoinette Poisson are all printed in this tiny, charming studio in the 11th. The papers are hand-painted with pigment and water. In the photo above you’ll see the jars of tempera used to paint the paper.

The paper above is one of their domino prints. What draws me so much to their designs is how they manage to preserve the past and incorporate a modern twist at the same time.