From the archive: Maxime de la Falaise and Sarah St George's house in Provence (2001)
The area round the hills of the Alpilles, in the Bouches du Rhone department of France, is an odd part of the world and hard to interpret - as befits the birthplace of Nostradamus. Like the rest of Provence, it has never been truly French, but local in its outlook. Its towns are municipally proud of themselves, but seething with tourists; very ancient, but disconcertingly spick and span, with scarcely a crumble or flake to be seen, even in the backest back streets; country towns, but with city prices and vexatious parking.
The people who live here must accept that the Alpilles constitute a famous site touristique and that hundreds of thousands of strangers are determined to visit when the weather is hot. Locals can hardly be blamed if in summer they give the impression of being a little sniffy; wishing the season was profitably over, and the faces in the street once again the familiar, good-humoured, year-round ones they gladly cross the street to kiss.
Such a face now belongs to Sarah St George, a writer and former banker who came to the region eight years ago, fell under its spell and has lived here ever since. She brought with her Maxime de la Falaise - a beauty, an artist, a fashion and furniture designer, six feet tall and the laughing survivor of a long life of spectacular non-conformity. They hatched a plan to buy something they could share, something in the blazing, Aegean-like light of the Alpilles. With this in mind they searched round the district until they stumbled on what Sarah describes as a “gloomy, grey-black, mid-nineteenth-century box’, half of which was a barn, with a messy, overgrown plot of land behind and a few trees. Maxime took one look at it and said: “This is wonderful." I was staggered, but luckily I was already attuned to her flashes of insight - her eye is seldom wrong and she has a special gist for instantly visualizing the hidden life and beauty of a thing, no matter how humble. At first I wasn't sure I had the confidence to tackle such a big project - I'd never pieced together a real home of my own outside the city. "Go on," Maxime said blithely. "You'll be fine. Just do it.” So I did.'
Indeed, from the road the house isn't at all striking: strolling past, you probably wouldn't give it a second thought. You'd take it for yet another spare, entirely functional Provençal mas, or farmhouse. It stands, nothing out of the ordinary, ground floor and two upper ones and a garage, behind rusty gates just off a straight lane that passes through lush, Mistral-swept, loamy countryside. It's only when you go round the back that it begins to dawn on you that something very unusual and creative has been achieved here.
MAY WE SUGGEST: A dream house set in the lavender fields of the Luberon
For one thing, where there used to be an open field there's a shady, intricately planned garden full of roses and lavender, with acres of orchards to the right of it, and a long, narrow pool edged with cut stone set grace fully in line with the house. The façade overlooking this garden is a plain one, with lime-green shutters flanking the windows, the embrasures of which, visible from the outside, are painted blue. Closer inspection reveals a feast of colour and energy beyond.
So in you go. The door is set dead centre in the façade, opening on to a hall with sunflower-yellow walls, green floor tiles and green-painted furniture. The dining room is to the left, the sitting room to the right; the staircase to the two upper floors, painted in the same yellow, is straight ahead.
The sitting room used to be the barn. It is the largest single space in the house and every centimetre of it, except for the stone floor and the chimneypiece is a riot of patterns and colours. For many years, and in many houses, Maxime de la Falaise collected objects and furniture of little intrinsic value, then painted them in designs and hues inspired by her own imagi nary vision of Africa. Now they're all assembled here. The table at the end of the sitting room is so crowded around by her decorated chairs of different sizes, shapes, hues and patterns that there seems to be a mute but riotous dinner party in progress. The rough hewn Provençal beams of the ceiling are likewise painted with intricate African-inspired designs, while the walls are striped with pale bands of cadmium yellow and red ochre. The upholstered furniture, notably two George Smith sofas covered in fabrics by John Stefanidis, adds vivid touches of orange, yellow, blue and green.
In all the other rooms in the original farmhouse, Sarah and Maxime have used increasingly exuberant colours, in the form of painted panelling, furniture, mosaics and objects. As you wander through space after bright space, you begin to wonder how it is that such intense variety holds together, and why it's all so cohesive when it's all so contrary to the rules. Sarah St George supplies part of the answer: 'You could never have a house that looked like this anywhere else in the world. We just responded to the place and the light with what we had to offer, and we brought the outside in. At the beginning I didn't realize quite how much of a bohemian Maxime really is, and how intrepid. She would be quite happy, even now, to live in a caravan - but, as it turned out, a creative collaboration started to evolve, here in Provence, without either of us fully expecting it. She's a true creator in everything she says and does. My flair is for the practical side. The longer we worked together, the more we found the house was turning into a kind of artistic expression, as well as our home. We both see it as something that will out last us. In terms of taste, Maxime's a step beyond me, but I'm learning, and these days I don't need to run things by her as often as I used to. She's taught me that if you're genuinely free of heart, you don't have to worry. Everything you need is in you already. As Maxime said right at the start, "You'll be fine. Just do it.” '
Tim Clinch1/17Oscar the labrador lies in the hall, with its sunflower-yellow walls and tiles in contrasting shades of green which match the green wrought-iron portemanteau.
Tim Clinch2/17The main staircase combines the existing traditional red cement tiles with the same green tiles as in the hall.
Tim Clinch3/17Maxime decorated much of the furniture in this house, including the vivid cupboard in the dining area (below) and the chairs in the sitting room. She also painted tribal patterns on to the beams. The carpet–also Maxime's design–is by Christopher Farr and the 'Dog Kennel' sofas by George Smith, covered in John Stefanidis fabrics.
Tim Clinch4/17Cool colours in the dining area are offset by vibrant ceramics and a circular table on a carved nineteenth-century base.
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Tim Clinch6/17In the kitchen, a stained glass marquise hangs above the stove.
Tim Clinch7/17An Andy Warhol poster in the kitchen.
Tim Clinch8/17The airy spare bedroom has a traditional French wardrobe or penderie, a painted nineteenth-century French bed and a trunk decorated by Maxime in her signature African-inspired style. On the ceiling she has applied a quirky leopard-skni paint effect to the beams.
Tim Clinch9/17Sarah's bedroom is decorated with Afghani hangings (below), Persian carpets and French and American furniture.
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Tim Clinch11/17The Moroccan-tiled bathroom houses an antique Irish bath.
Tim Clinch12/17A view through the pergola to a circle of pencil cypress trees, lavender and wild flowers, designed, as is the whole garden, by Jane Fearnley-Whittingstall.
Tim Clinch13/17Looking from the dining room onto the terrace.
Tim Clinch14/17A view of the 25-metre long traditional rustic swimming pool (bassin), which has roughly cut stone edges to blend in with its surroundings and is flanked by citrus trees in local ceramic pots.
Tim Clinch15/17View of the circle garden.
Tim Clinch16/17The circle garden.
Tim Clinch17/17An early twentieth-century Parisian water-carrier.
