This fantasy of digging up a treasure in the woods? The dream of venturing into the castle’s attic to discover a forgotten masterpiece by a famous painter? It hasn’t happened. Sadly, most things left behind by the previous owners of Lescure were not to our taste and we’ve discarded all offending items. A most beautiful exception is a graceful, otherworldly kimono lady who I found hiding against a wall underneath gaudy flower curtains. Despite having rescued her from the shadows more than a year ago she won’t look me in the eye. She’s not of this world, not of this time, and she diverts her gaze, focused on a realm that’s invisible to me. From this unseeable landscape she quiets my mind and enkindles my creativity.

I used to struggle with the pale yellow walls that are a given in the guest room where she has taken up residence. She showed me how to make them work. If she can pull off soft yellow eyeshadow with a light blue robe, so can this room. And so the colour scheme of her attire has been inspiring the palette of the entire space. The supple folds of her garment’s fabric led me to lightweight curtains that float in even the subtlest of drafts, and I love their faded blue linen over the dying red of the shutters. Lescure’s oriental beauty is also into layering and adding accents – note the blue and white stripes peeking out around her waist. This I translated to the bedding and by adding objects in deeply saturated blues such as navy and indigo. The result so far is a room drenched in poetic tranquility. It’s still a work in progress, but I can already attest to this: sleep here, under the quiet nobility of the geisha’s gaze, and your nights will be renewing, rich in dreams and intuition.