La Maison Beaulieu

La maison Beaulieu is disorienting at first. It is a maze of hallways and small passages, lit by candelabras, chandeliers and oil lamps with ornate shades covering them. It is nothing like the grey grid like corridors of the Orphanage, where everything was a shade of grey or brown. Even people of things from the outside world seemed to dim and drain of colour upon crossing the threshold. Grayness was a contractible illness.

Here Mrs. Beaulieu’s collection of blown glass perfume bottles Mr.Beaulieu’s assortment of outlandish knives and daggers, along with each artifact and piece of art on all available walls and surfaces creates the illusion the entire world exists inside the house.

The garden is a never-ending project for the Beaulieus. They are forever adding new pavilions and gazebos with Corinthian pillars, having ponds dugs out or trellises climbing with roses leaning against rock walls. New fish from Japan or the Caribbean are delivered every few months, exotic blooms and vines around every turn.

The house is a concoction of cultures; rooms come alive in the smell and feel of faraway lands and exotic corners or the world. There is a room Sage recognizes based on a room in an expensive hotel in Bombay, another she recalls from a book in her foster parents’ keeping that chronicles the life and death of an Arab prince. There is an oriental room with a small koi pond in the centre and fabrics embroidered with cherry blossoms. Sage feels as though her Beaulieus have the entire world in their house. The detail in each room is astounding, not only in the furniture and textiles but in the collections of books, the flavour of incense, the colour of wines and brandies in the decanters. It is the atmosphere that she loves. 

Art by Mats Minnhagen

Text by Lucie MacAulay