Designer Andrew Gn's glamorous new salon in Paris is a sunlit, airy space overlooking a private courtyard. It's dominated by two enormous 18th-century Venetian-glass chandeliers, which came from the historic Doria Pamphilj family's Florentine palazzo and arrived, says Gn, in 10 cases: 'It took a week to figure out how to assemble them.'
Covering an entire wall that conceals a spacious fitting room, is black lacquered panelling embellished with gold flowers -an Anglo-Japanese look inspired by the artist James Whistler's gilded Peacock Room, painted for his patron Frederick Leyland in the late 19th-century. On the opposite wall is a mural painting by Iranian artist Roshanak Varasteh, depicting pomegranates, gold branches, mythical birds and prancing gazelles. He is constantly building on this collection, an exotic atmosphere (a little bit European, a little bit Asian) of oil lamps, gilded mirrors, bronze vases and cast iron urns bursting with fresh white flowers.
Gn has a refined eye and his tireless searches of antique markets and auction rooms have uncovered an Italian ivory-inlaid cabinet, German dragon candleholders, Egyptian-inspired arts and crafts chairs made by Liberty of London, and a black lacquer table that looks Japanese but is 1950s French. Many pieces are in a decadent looking boudoir, the walls of which are covered in black and gold wallpaper in a Persian-inspired motif of carnations and jasmine, which Gn likes 'because it has a William Morris feel to it - very early 20th-century.' A silk-maker in Lyon specially wove it for him, and such are his standards, the effect is sumptuous and exotic.