Mother & Daughter Buy an Abandoned Chateau, Invite You to Stay as they Restore It

Back in 2013, we broke a story about a couple that bought an abandoned chateau and started a blog to share their journey. Widespread interest, longing and general FOMO (fear-of-missing-out) ensued on the internet. Several years later, we’ve found a similar fairytale: an architect from Austria, Elisabeth Herring, and her daughter Valerie, adopt a neglected 16th…

The Secret History of the Conversation Chair

It’s taken many names, shapes and forms over the centuries – the conversation chair, the courting bench, a tête-à-tête, a chaperone chair, the vis-à-vis, gossip chair or the indiscret. Considered the pinnacle of sophistication and style during the Gilded and Victorian age, if you were entertaining the fashionable elite, one simply wasn’t running a home…

Victorian Mansion For Sale, Perfect for Wes Anderson’s remake of the Addams Family

Meet the Victorian gem that rolled right out of our dreams, and into the little city of Abilene, Kansas. The yellow brick mansion – boasting two dozen rooms and five storeys – is the ultimate Addams-Family-meets-Wes-Anderson fantasy. The “Lebold Mansion,” est. 1880, is already renovated – such a rare case for these beauties, which often…

An Abandoned Overgrown Estate is the Last of its Kind in the Heart of Paris

Wild and consumed by nature, like a scene described by Dickens in Great Expectations – an estate frozen in time, fit for the reclusive Miss Havisham herself – a “country house” in the centre of the city, surrounded by Paris’ most coveted real estate, will go up for sale this week at auction. In a…

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The Keys to Amsterdam’s Secret Chapel B&B

What’s gold, pink, and Amsterdam’s best kept secret? The 18th century chapel-turned-AirBnB that landed in our inbox this morning, courtesy of a hot tip from our pal Holly Beach of the Choosy Traveller, who recently discovered the hidden gem and found it to be of the most unique places she’s ever seen “in Amsterdam, or…

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A Lonely New York Mansion For Sale, Possibly Haunted, Still a Rare Steal

Ten bedrooms, five bathrooms, four fireplaces and 6,000 square feet – the dream fixer-upper for a bargain $50,000. So the question is, exactly how haunted is this house? The James Seymour Mansion was built in 1861 by, you guessed it, James Seymour, a notable philanthropist who had founded the local library and city hospital. Located…

The Lost Art of Decorating with Shells

In Margate, on the south-east coast of England, there is an underground grotto lined with majestic mosaics made entirely of seashells – and no-one knows how it got there. The site was discovered in 1835 by a father and son who were attempting to dig a duck pond. The story goes that the young boy…

Inside the Secret Parisian Warehouse where the French Presidents Go Furniture Shopping

Picture an IKEA warehouse – but make it chic – and add an inventory of priceless furniture, textiles and objects that date as far back as the reign of the Sun King, Louis XIV, who indisputably raised the bar on what we’ll call French ‘power decorating’ for centuries to come. A sprawling Art Deco reinforced…

A Dozen Celebrity Digs That Remind us to Go Big or Go Home

As long as folks have had money, they’ve had the ability to realise interior designs that most of us can only dream about – to breathe new life into ancient Italian villas, or hole up in a French seaside fortress; to live out their days in a storybook windmill, or commission a veritable spaceship. Our…

Mansion of the Month: Miami’s Villa Viscaya

It rose from the mangrove swamps of Miami; an Italian Renaissance paradise surrounded by dense tropical forest in Coconut Grove, the city’s oldest continuously inhabited neighbourhood. They called it the “Hearst Castle of the East”, even though Villa Vizcaya came first. James Deering was heir to a harvesting fortune, a lover of the arts, an antiques…