With its distinctive brick and flint walls and shuttered windows, this early 20th-century former fisherman’s cottage really couldn’t be anywhere other than the Pays de Caux, as its architecture is
so typical of the region’s vernacular.
In fact, everything about the house and its locale is quintessentially French: this part of northern Normandy is closely associated with important artists and writers, from Maupassant and Victor Hugo to Claude Monet and his fellow Impressionists, many of whom painted the area’s beaches and high chalk cliffs.
Step through the door, however, and you embark on a journey around the world: first to Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell’s Charleston farmhouse, just across the Channel, and then on to Spain and Africa. At every turn another influence can be detected in either the decor or the collections on display, all of which have been gathered by the owners, antiques dealer Laurent Di Benedetto and his partner, Didier,
a travel guide publisher.
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Shields from Oceania stand alongside large wingback chairs covered in William Morris fabric, abstract canvases, and animal heads woven from wicker. There are lengths of coconut cloth picked up in California, carpets from Tunisia, and ceramics from Morocco.
In the little sitting room, the white-painted brick fireplace seems to have always stood opposite the Napoleon-style daybed and yet, it was only recently rebuilt from scratch.
The couple bought the house 10 years ago, from a woman whose husband had worked as a fisherman. The idea then, was ‘to make it our refuge, while keeping the spirit of the region’, which they felt had often been stripped out of local buildings.
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To that end, they retained and restored all the original features, such as the ceiling beams and the cob walls on the first floor, and also, later, interesting additions such as the 1950s tiles in the kitchen. ‘We had to find a balance between the original rustic character of the house and our universe, influenced by our travels and my imagination,’ says Laurent.
This meant choosing not to knock rooms together, but rather respecting the initial layout of the cottage and making a feature of the smaller rooms instead. With the sea just a few hundred metres away, the couple wanted their home (and in particular the bedrooms) to evoke ‘an atmosphere close to that of the time of the Impressionists, when sea bathing first became fashionable.’ In the ‘winter’ bedroom, on the ground floor, huge Pierre Frey curtains are draped around a late 19th-century rattan bed covered with an antique Paisley quilt.
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Upstairs, three more bedrooms each have their own personalities, specific influences and names. A pretty English wallpaper with birds and branches pays homage to Marcel Proust in ‘Albertine’s’ room. While the ‘Moroccan’ room takes inspiration from both North Africa, with its woven basketware and animal hide rug, and Scandinavia – the colours on the walls recall the artist Carl Larsson’s home in Sweden. Finally, in the small ‘Ivy’ room, a faux wooden fireplace creates a sense of intimacy.
The kitchen, in the centre of the house, as is typical of the region, reflects a huge mix of styles. The fireplace has been painted black, the walls pink and yellow, and brown tiles have been laid ‘to evoke a bit of a Van Gogh painting’. For Laurent and Didier, pictorial evocations are never far away. But the couple didn’t want the house to feel like a museum. ‘We wanted a living house, where the 21st century is not absent either.’
The garden is clearly inspired by the Impressionists and, though small, generous planting creates the illusion of space. ‘This house is also to be shared with friends. A sort of family home, but one we’ve created from scratch.’
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