Random notes on ETTC Grifter Chateau Style:
So the reno of
Chateau du Sailhant in the Auvergne gives a benchmark idea of what a fortified farmhouse chateau, renovated by a preservation architect with high ethical and taste standards, could look like. It's not my taste (I discovered looking at the pix of the really magical restoration that the whole macho idea of a chateau high on a predatory volcanic spur kind of pisses me off), but it is a respectful, honest and creative restoration. Most impressive to me was the owner's visit to every one of 40 chateaux open to the public in the Auvergne -- so he became an expert on the subject of Auvergne chateau architecture before he did a lick of decor on his place.
Stephanie loves to visit other peoples' chateaux. What strikes a student of ETTC Grifter Chateau Style is the complete absence of reference to the greatest chateau in Indre et Loire, her region, the second-most visited in France, most famous for its female owners,
Chenonceau. (This is as bad or worse as complete lack of reference to the local immortal, George Sand, who actually did run a
free love salon and artists' colony, just down the road, dressed in trousers, sometimes, a true Bohemian and liberated woman of the 19th century.)
Chenonceau's gardens were created during the French Renaissance by the king's mistress, Diane de Poitiers, and after his death, by his widow, Catherine de Medici. They are absolutely world famous, one of the top five landscape architecture pilgrimage sites, and completely different from the Versailles/parterre model Davy and Dumbo are applying to Lalande. They were for ladies promenading, not for looking down on from a tower. (Monty Don's "Gardens of Power and Passion" in the French gardens series does a good job on Chenonceau's for laymen like me.) In fact, I can just see the original owners of Lalande saying
duck you to Louis XIV and all the hegemony of power Versailles and its gardens stood for.
We now know an ethical chateau restorer refers to local sources. And as we know, SJ and the rest of the ETTC Grifters live in their own Disney chateau bubble.
The Chenonceau (and George Sand) style story, long story short: Renaissance (16th c., like the old part of Lalande), Louis XIII at the latest, no curly legs on those chairs, female power at its highest expression was not femme or baroque, or rococo, or Glenn Close liaisons dangereuse in any way. Real female power did not play those ridiculous Murano, shag-the-help, games.