Gilles & Boissier Mastermind Maison Courvoisier’s Grand Return

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Gilles & Boissier Mastermind Maison Courvoisier’s Grand Return

Since 1828, the stately Maison Courvoisier has presided over the picturesque Charente River in the town of Jarnac, a quaint commune located between two grape growing regions in the heart of France’s Cognac region. Locals and tourists alike have long passed through the maison in search of the world’s finest cognacs. Seeking to preserve its convivial spirit and share its story with an entirely new generation, the house tapped Gilles & Boissier to oversee an ambitious three-year renovation that saw the chateau undergo a top-to-bottom overhaul, sprucing up its timeworn interiors and bringing its history and craftsmanship to the fore.

The intervention sees the Parisian interiors firm funnel its signature old-world elegance through the lens of Courvoisier’s heritage. Take the second-floor corridor, whose hand-painted walls transition from a sunny hue to a deep amber referencing the aged eau-de-vie in the maison’s Paradis. There’s also the dining room, where guests enjoy exclusive cognac pairing dinners from a monumental palissandro marble table with low-contrast veins that preserve the liquid’s distinct hue. The most memorable moment is found in a salon that was once used as a private sitting room, where a portrait of Félix painted by Véronique Van Der Esch takes pride of place, even among bold touches like a mirrored ceiling and statement oak paneling. For Patrick Gilles and Dorothée Boissier, the firm’s founders, the finished product is a point of immense pride: “We worked to elevate and honor what was already there while introducing a new relevancy and energy,” they explain. Tours and tastings will be held occasionally, with overnight stays available by invitation. —Ryan Waddoups

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In Laguna Beach, Casa Loma Exudes Barefoot Luxury

Up and down the California coast, Marc and Rose hospitality has left their mark on the boutique hotel scene with beachy getaways imbued with Mediterranean ease. Their latest, a refit of Laguna Beach’s Casa Loma, brings a breezy selection of screen-printed art, relief sculpture, and murals curated by Land, along with landscape design by Orca and interiors by Electric Bowery to the cliffside getaway. Upon check-in, guests can look forward to Madre mezcal cocktails or fresh-baked cookies from Rye Goods bakery, a fellow Orange County fixture. After a day of taking in Southern California’s burgeoning art landscape or exploring the surrounding, breathtaking landscapes, guests can retreat to rooms stocked with D.S. & Durga amenities, Canyon Coffee pour over, and custom listening stations outfitted with radios by Tivoli. —Jenna Adrian-Diaz

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Paul Sepuya Maps Out His Community, Mind, and Process

Moments of tenderness gently unfold in the intimate photographs of Paul Mpagi Sepuya, who captures his community of close companions—friends, lovers, and fellow queer artists—gently interlocking with fragments of his own body. The American artist tends to invest his images with a sense of quiet closeness that strips studio photography of its transactional nature, instead setting an atmosphere of softness while quite literally turning the lens back on viewers. Over the past two decades, which saw him relocate from New York to pursue an MFA at the University of California, Los Angeles, Sepuya has honed a deep sensitivity and skill in capturing all types of bodies on camera—particularly Black and queer bodies, earning praise from fellow photographer Catherine Opie.

Hundreds of Sepuya’s images from a collection of related bodies of work, along with his processes and points of interest, are compiled in a newly released Aperture tome offering an artist-guided tour through his mind and portfolio. Illuminated with texts written by curator Gökcan Demirkazik, Paul Mpagi Sepuya: Dark Room A-Z excavates and maps out artistic data points—how his subjects relate to each other, their personal testimonies, excerpts from scholarly interviews—that fully unpack his complex approach. Crucially, he brings visibility to the Black and queer bodies often absent from photography studios of yore. His project “proposes the fundamental presence of Blackness as requisite for visibility,” he writes in the introduction. “[It] argues for acknowledging photography as first and foremost a process of constructive, subjective, yet material desire.” —R.W.

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Evan Funke Channels Roman Splendor at Mother Wolf Miami

Celebrated pasta chef Evan Funke knows how to make an impression. For proof, look no further than the six-time restaurateur’s first East Coast venture, Mother Wolf in the Miami Design District. Funke and hospitality group Ten Five teamed up with Martin Brudnizki Design Studio and stylist Bernadette Blanc to translate the menu’s Roman influences to interiors befitting the Magic City’s rollicking restaurant scene. Murano glass pendants, scarlet red velvet and leather banquettes, and artwork inspired by Rome’s rich sculpture tradition set a dramatic stage for Funke’s culinary theater. While Roman pastas and brick-oven pizzas anchor the menu, its biggest highlights can be found in the pesce section’s prawn, scallop, and calamari fritto misto plated with lemon, fennel, and red snapper, and the carne section’s 50-day dry aged ribeye. —J.A.D.

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In London, Chandigarh Furniture Meets South Asian Art

Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret both spent time living and working in India, where they absorbed the country’s manifold design traditions and invested them into beloved architecture and furniture that remains coveted. The British-Indian curator Rajan Bijlani is one of today’s most prolific collectors of their pieces made in Chandigarh during the 1950s and ‘60s, having transformed his quaint London townhouse—the former studio of ceramicist Emmanuel Cooper—into a sizable trove of their indelible design work.

During a frenetic Frieze Week, he pulled back the curtain on “Syncretic Voices,” an exhibition that layers his collection with artworks by six artists of South Asian origin. Compelling dialogues ensue, from the otherworldly red-and-orange glow of Rana Begum’s gridded unit in the living room to the bold abstractions of Tanya Ling and Soumya Netrabile’s canvases backdropping serene vignettes. Open by appointment through the end of October, the show aims to provide greater visibility to South Asian talents in London’s crowded art market. —R.W.

OBSESS
Tsatsas: Cy Shoulder Bag

Often allegorical and conceptually profound, the works of late painter-sculptor Cy Twombly have inspired writers and fellow artists since the early days of his practice. His Cycnus, a wood, palm leaf, and painted creation stemming from a myth in Ovid’s Metamorphosis, now informs Tsatsas’ latest shoulder bag. Aptly named Cy, the collection takes cues from Cycnus’ organic form and is constructed with a napa or buffalo hide leather exterior and lamb leather lining. An homage to the sculpture and the artist himself, Tsatsas maintained a dialogue with the Cy Twombly estate throughout the design process. —J.A.D.

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Michael Anastassiades Chooses Light

Our current dark times call for light, according to Michael Anastassiades, the Cypriot lighting designer who’s debuting three poetic new products that embody natural harmony at the ceramic purveyor Mutina’s headquarters in Fiorina, Italy. They range from structures made from bamboo canes held together by waxed linen threads and columns clad with square “tiles” made of natural oak wood to a realistic ceramic vase humorously resembling an ostrich egg. “In a historical period full of negativity,” Anastassiades says, “it’s necessary to find a renewed positive vision of the world and the times to come.”—R.W.