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"View Slideshow\n\nThomas Pheasant had long had a chronic case of Francophilia, but two years ago it became acute. \"I've always loved Paris, plus I just connect so much to the work of so many of the French designers of the 1930s, '40s and '50s,\" says the Washington, D.C.-based decorator, by way of explaining his snap decision to hunt for an apartment of his own in the City of Light. \"I was in St.-Germain-des-Pr\u00E9s talking to a friend on the street when I noticed we were standing in front of a real estate office, and it was like a light went on. I dashed in and spelled out what I wanted\u2014a not-too-big traditional-style apartment in St.-Germain with great views\u2014and the real estate lady shrugged, What else is new? That's what everybody wants.' \"\n\nBut then, as wonders work, little more than an hour later a rather startled Pheasant picked up the ringing phone in his hotel room to hear from the selfsame agent that some clients of hers were just put-ting their place on the market and that, in every particular he had articulated, it filled the bill. The location was certainly prime\u2014the immediate neighborhood embraced the rue Jacob, the rue des Saints P\u00E8res and the rue de Seine: collectively home to many of the antiques shops that Pheasant liked to frequent. And the building, a handsome Neo-classical limestone edifice on the boulevard St.-Germain itself, more than sufficed. So far so good\u2014only the apartment remained to be seen. \"As I was riding up in the elevator, the anticipation was killing me,\" the designer recalls.\n\nThe second he stepped inside, he could, as they say, see the potential. In terms of views, the place pulsed with Paris; Pheasant could be a tourist from his own apartment, a sightseer without leaving his premises. \"It was like a picture postcard,\" he marvels. From one side he was able to take in the mansard roofs of the Louvre as well as the vast Romanesque-Byzantine basilica of the Sacr\u00E9-Coeur at the top of Montmartre, and from the other \u2014the boulevard St.-Germain side\u2014he could see the city's most synonymous structure, the Eiffel Tower.\n\nBut not even splendors such as these could blind him to the sad reality that the apartment had been \"butch-reed\" over the years\u2014as a consequence, he learned, of its having been, along with two others, carved out of an enormous floor-through. He lingered \"for about four hours, walking the 2,500 square feet back and forth, already renovating in my head\u2014How am I going to get it done? How long is it going to take? How much is it going to cost?' By the time I left, I knew I was going to give it my best shot.\"\n\nHere, as in any project Pheasant takes on, the architecture heavily influenced the route he chose. \"The details in all the rooms had to be true to period,\" he says. \"There was a lot of loving restoration of moldings and plaster ceilings throughout, and even of hardware\u2014I had to strip all the French doors of about 15 layers of paint to get to the original steel-and-bronze fittings.\" The job would prove to be about half restoration and half enhancement. Ugly Formica closets had been put in and the living room painted an unsettling green by one of the previous owners. \"There was one place where my American sensibilities really came out\u2014all the exposed pipes,\" the designer admits. \"They're very typical of these buildings\u2014you know, in the finest apartments in Paris, the pipes are the pipes. Nevertheless, I put a good deal of time and effort into moving and hiding them.\"\n\nWhen it came to the palette, Pheasant was wisely inspired by Paris itself\u2014the limestone of the buildings. He had the apartment walls all painted a matte bisque and the upholstery fabrics, draperies and carpets contrived in tones of gray and beige. The furnishings, he decided, would be a mix of pieces of his own design and antiques. The latter would come to include such treasures as the living room's Qing Dynasty scroll table and myriad smart modernist lamps and sconces all executed on private commission during the 1950s by the Corsican-born, Paris-based artisan Agostini. \"I was drawn to their organic look and also to the fact that he used traditional materials like gilded bronze, which made them the perfect complement to my own furniture,\" Pheasant remarks.\n\nThe apartment is replete not only with pieces from the designer's signature collection but with unique ones that he created especially for the Paris space and that he modestly calls \"experimental custom.\" Lounge and club chairs, a mirror, the bed, chests, tables (dining, night, side and games) and carpets all embody the Pheasant aesthetic in their clean, confident-looking, classically driven pleasingness; they are, in his own throwaway words, \"things that have kind of a familiar look but are still fresh.\" The \"experimental custom\" standouts are the six-panel mahogany-and-glass folding screen in the sitting/dining room, the black-lacquered commode with a Greek-key motif in the entrance hall and the invitingly low bronze-footed ottoman in the living room. \"These pieces of mine,\" he maintains, \"are the sum of all the things that have ever impressed me about Paris.\"\n\nFor Pheasant, there were new kinds of challenges involved in bringing this apartment into being. \"You know, I do this work in the States all the time\u2014it's second nature\u2014but the thought of doing it in a foreign city made me a little apprehensive,\" he confesses. \"The ways of working and the ways of living are very different; it was frustrating at first, because I'm so used to asking for something and having it done immediately, and in France\u2014in Paris\u2014it's not that it won't get done, it's just that there's another approach to what immediately' means. Part of the beauty of learning about another culture and investing yourself in it is that, rather than forcing your own way, you try to adapt to theirs and see how their point of view might change your life\u2014and it has, mine.\" Clearly, the experience of establishing this apartment has given the designer a renewed sense of professional self. \"Just being in Paris and feeling a part of it has filled me with energy that I pour back into my work, wherever it happens to be.\"\n\nAltogether, Thomas Pheasant assesses, the apartment is \"right on target with what I wanted to accomplish; it's got a sense of calm and order and a lot of sophistication. A number of French people have commented that it looks so Parisian, and one woman, perusing my furniture, said, You must have been French in a former life.' Now I know I've succeeded,\" he laughs, \"if they're wanting to take credit for me.\" Indeed: Pheasant has feathered his own nest brilliantly."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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