Must-See Photos of a Glittering Aerie on the Left Bank of Paris
Linda Pinto, the interior designer, had lived along -Paris’s elegant Quai d’Orsay for decades, first in her own apartment on a side street, and later in the home of her late brother, the much-heralded decorator Alberto Pinto, which faced the Seine. Then she heard about a place for sale on a chic Left Bank street that is home to several prominent Parisians, including LVMH chairman Bernard Arnault. Built in 1932 in the Louis XVI style, the apartment occupies a generous 3,500 square feet and overlooks a private walled garden said to be one of the largest in the city. When Pinto saw it, she knew she had found her new home. “I hear birds all day long,” she says over tea on a cold autumn afternoon, sitting on one of her two raspberry—velvet Jean-Michel Frank sofas. “We are disconnected from the world—like in a cocoon. It’s a dream to live here. A joy.”
Since the death of her brother in 2012, Pinto has managed Alberto Pinto Interior Design, the firm he founded nearly five decades ago. Among the 50-person studio’s current projects is one of Paris’s most prized properties: the H?tel Lambert, a 17th-century mansion on the ?le Saint-Louis, designed by the French neoclassical architect Louis Le Vau and now owned by a member of the Qatari royal family. The company’s signature is what Pinto calls “classic contemporary,” with a strong Continental European base and a soup?on of Orientalism in the lighting, palette, and decor—influenced, no doubt, by the Pinto siblings’ childhood in Morocco.
Her new apartment also embodies that style: opulent yet restful, historic yet modern, and very personal. She wanted to create a warm and welcoming retreat in the heart of the city, where she could host formal dinners for her beau monde friends as well as easily receive her grandchildren for movie nights and weekend sleepovers.
With the help of her colleague Jean Huguen, she set to work. She kept the living room intact but buffed it up, employing artisans from Atelier Mériguet-Carrère to match the original patinated-oak paneling on the south wall with coordinating faux-finished surfaces. In the center of one wall stands a monumental bronze sculpture of a 17th--century lady-in-waiting by the contemporary Spanish sculptor Manolo Valdés; it is inspired by Diego Velázquez’s masterpiece Las Meninas. “Alberto bought it a long, long time ago,” Pinto says, as she walks over and gives it a gentle pet. “I caress it all the time.”
She surrounded “la menine,” as the sculpture is known, with furnish-ings from her previous home, such as the 1970s bronze cocktail tables by Belgian artist Ado Chale; some new acquisitions are an Yves Klein cocktail table in hot pink (“You don’t see them often”) and a Jean Dunand lacquered screen decorated with puppies and kittens (“I thought it was so charming!”). There is also important art—much of it inherited from her brother’s collection, including drawings by Henry Moore, Zao Wou-Ki, and Joan Miró.
Elsewhere in the apartment, down came the walls. Pinto reorganized the floor plan to incorporate three guest rooms for family visits; a media room (“I don’t like TVs in the living room,” she affirms); a professional kitchen (she has a private chef but loves to cook, too); a butler’s pantry; and a wall of vertical-slot shelving to hold her many silver trays. There is a walk-in china closet that would make any tableware collector swoon: its felted floor-to-ceiling shelves store her vast porcelain collection. “I got out the ladder this morning and said, ‘Hmm, what shall I use tonight?’”
She was preparing to host a dinner for 10 that evening in her Japonisme-tinged dining room, with its ocher walls, black commodes, custom Lilou Grumbach-Marquand window shades, and an imposing Hervé Van der Straeten bronze-and-crystal pendant light. She chose vintage violet Art Deco monogrammed placemats, antique Lobmeyr crystal glasses, Puiforcat Elysée silverware, an 18th-century Famille Rose dinner service, and a rock-crystal ball surrounded by 17th-century Chinese Ho Ho boy porcelain figurines as the centerpiece. “One is not obliged to always have flowers,” she counsels. Dinner was in the midst of being prepared by her liveried staff: roast quail, cèpes sautéed in a sea of butter, and gratin dauphinois. “It’s such a pleasure entertaining at home,” she says.
Pinto has her fetishes, and they are apparent throughout her home. She is especially drawn to rock-crystal lamps and decorative objects, and a pair of thick candlesticks from the Yves Saint Laurent collection are a prized possession given to her by his partner, Pierre Bergé. “Rock crystal brings good luck,” she explains brightly. And there’s her veritable Noah’s ark of creatures: monkeys, elephants, toads, parrots, and toucans, in silver, bronze, porcelain, and crystal, on tables and shelves, on wallpaper, and in paintings—everywhere you turn. “Yes, I do love animals,” she admits with a laugh. “They, too, bring joy.”
This story originally appeared in the January/February 2020 issue of ELLE Decor. SUBSCRIBE
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