THE MARCHE AUX PUCES IS A LONG WAY FROM CHICAGO, but that didn’t stop interior designer Amy Grabelle from schlepping back loads of furniture from the famed Parisian antiques market for her Evanston home. Or pieces for her many clients, who would often give her requests before she went off on one of her buying trips. What she couldn’t find at Marche aux Puces, she’d track down in other nooks and crannies in Paris or the countryside-like a vintage commode she spied at a Left Bank decor store and an antique Louis XV daybed she unearthed in a tiny antiques shop in Ile sur la Sorgue.
Fortunately, she usually had her husband, Barry, along to help. When she wanted authentic toile de jouy painted fabric for her bedroom, she hit La Maison Dreyfus at Le Marche Saint Pierre, another famous market. “I made Barry lug a 35-meter bolt of it back to our hotel room on his shoulders because we couldn’t find a taxi. Then we carried it on the plane to get it home,” she says. The same was true for a huge pair of Anduze planters in her family dining area, which she found in an open-air pottery market in Provence.
For a while, she was so busy buying and selling in France that she bought La Maison de Nicole, a home-decor store on Walton Street just off Michigan Avenue, from its French founders, changed the name to Ma Maison Franaise and used it as the base for her interior-design business. But last year, as the value of the dollar fell against the Euro and her three children were hitting their teens she decided not to renew the shop’s five-year lease on the space. “I really needed to be based closer to home, so I moved my office up here [to Evanston],” she says.
Her buying trips abroad are fewer, but that hasn’t stopped her from tinkering with her home, which she says will always embrace a French aesthetic and never really be finished. For instance, when they first moved into their current place 15 years ago, they had only a few bona fide French furnishings. Yet she managed to achieve l’esprit Franais with a hodge-podge of pieces she tracked down locally. Over the years, she has traded up as she became able to afford finer or authentic things, or became enamored of particular design eras.
She comes by her Francophile style naturally-“my great-grandparents came here from Alsace-Lorraine, and our whole family has always kept up its ties to our French culture,” she explains. But she’s maintained the French aesthetic in her home by nurturing it. “I inherited those first few pieces we had from my grandmother, but Barry and I really worked at building our own collection of family pieces and putting it together in our home.”
Getting the French look doesn’t necessarily require trips abroad. Many of the objects in Grabelle’s home come from local sources. “I’ve always been a scrounger and I’ve found things all over the place here. It doesn’t even take a lot of money,” she says, but it does call for “imagination, passion, vision and a lot of hunting.”
And a bit of savoir-faire. “The French use pieces they’ve inherited mixed with things they love or need, and make it all work by creating a balance in each room,” she says. “They really scrutinize their spaces to get it right, and aren’t afraid to change things around. Sometimes it takes color to help, or textiles and decorative accessories to add cohesion. But their decor isn’t contrived; it’s more spontaneous and from the heart.”
She applied these tactics in her own home, where she mixed pieces she loves from here and abroad with basics in each room to attain a potpourri of moods. She was going for a Parisian salon in her living room, a neoclassical demeanor in the dining room, a Provenale cottage in the kitchen and family room, and a Loire Valley chateau in the master bedroom, where all that toile de jouy now takes center stage swathing a majestic bed.
The living room is usually in flux because it’s the most prominent room in the house and the easiest to change, though Grabelle says, “It always retains a very Parisian demeanor.”
“I used to be very taken with the 18th Century, but last year I fell for the 20th Century,” she says, “so I’m adding more modern things to the room.” Case in point: a new modern leather sofa that was just moved in to replace a rolled-arm salon couch.
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Grabelle home resources:
Interior design: Amy Grabelle, Ma Maison Francaise. Living room: Sofa-Sherrill Collection, Merchandise Mart, Chicago; Napoleon III wood and marble side table-Ile sur la Sorgue; Lucite coffee table-Gallery Bernard, Chicago; anonymous end tables (pushed together)-Broadway Antique Market, Chicago; Tabriz area rug-Reza’s Rug Gallery, Chicago; vintage bergeres-out-of-business Chicago antique store, covered in Pierre Frey striped cotton-Nicholas Karas & Associates, The Merchandise Mart, Chicago; vintage Baroque gilt chandelier-Marche aux Puces, Paris; pair of side tables (surrounding mantel)-Baker Furniture, The Merchandise Mart; mantel-faux painted by Oleg Smirnov, Chicago; vintage reproduction Louis XVI-local estate sale. Dining room: Mahogany dining table-Caledonian, Northfield; vintage reproduction iron and crystal chandelier-Mis en Demeure, Paris; reproduction vintage Louis XV dining chairs-Marche aux Puces; 18th Century Louis XVI buffet-Royal Antiques, New Orleans; 19th Century gilt mirror-Weil Antiques, Montreal; tablecloth and drapes-custom made though Ma Maison Francaise; area carpet-Stark Carpet, The Merchandise Mart; set of urns-Christopher Galleries, Scottsdale; pedestal table and lamp-Gallery Bernard, Chicago. Kitchen dining area: Oak dining table-Crate & Barrel; vintage dining chairs-Lincoln Antique Mall, Chicago; chandelier-Idlewood Electric, Highland Park; drapes-custom made through Ma Maison Francaise. Chair detail: 18th Century bergere-Marche aux Puces, covered in Pierre Frey damask-Nicholas Karas & Associates, The Merchandise Mart; Louis XVI bronze and marble side table-Marche aux Puces; Chinoiserie armoire-McCormick Place Antique Show (now defunct); drapes-custom made through Ma Maison Francaise.
