footnote: the Delbee Bedroom

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from our story about the Pierre Delbee entry, a footnote.

Pierre Delbee's intimate bedroom- lined with a deep green silk velvet fabric that is trimmed all round in a decorative tape. The bedroom walls are a canvas for portrait miniatures, bas relief  & other small works of art. The decorative tapes aid in defining these small pieces and serve as a frame of sorts for the various groupings. Try to imagine the walls without the rich color and the tapes-it doesn't work. Part of Delbee's design genius is evident in this somewhat obvious alchemy. What seems a simple idea is an inspired one!

Another note of interest & another simple ploy- the cinnabar lacquer like painted trim that further defines the space. The Chinoiserie lacquer desk is just one of the eye popping treasures Delbee inserts into the room. This piece, according to the definitive book on JANSEN by James Archer Abbott, is "signed by the great ebeniste Francois Rubestuck and dated circa 1766." My favorite piece in the room is the "serpentine headboard, covered in fragments of an antique allegorical tapestry, and surmounted by an array of crucifixes"
( JANSEN, JAA.) The bedcovering is a needlepoint tracery design with  vines and berries entwining 18th century scenes and figures. Though Abbott asserts that the Delbee bedroom was all show with little attention to function. Does it matter? It is just one of the jewel's in this- Delbee's masterpiece of an apartment.

The Delbee reign at Jansen Abbott writes- was to "design rooms for sensory impact"- his own bedroom is a powerful statement of that philosophy.

if you did not read making an entrance, about the Delbee foyer see it HERE.


photograph from  JANSEN by James Archer Abbott.
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