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"Where clothes are concerned, the only person I trust is Balenciaga,&amp;quot; Mary de Rothschild used to say. &amp;quot;The same goes for Henri Samuel in the field of decoration.&amp;quot; This encomium\u2014which her cousin Edmond de Rothschild chose as a preface to the auction catalogue of Henri Samuel&amp;#39;s collections at Christie&amp;#39;s Monaco\u2014speaks volumes for the elegance of this great designer. It was an elegance that was appreciated by the most demanding of clients, notably the Rothschilds, the Vanderbilts, Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, Susan and John Gutfreund and the couturier Valentino, who entrusted the designer with his ch\u00E2teau at Saint-Nom-la-Bret\u00E8che, on the western side of Paris.\n\nSamuel was all the more at ease with high society because he himself was the scion of a refined and wealthy family. His father had been a banker and his grandfather a dealer in antiques. The young Samuel was originally headed toward a career in high finance, but after two years&amp;#39; apprenticeship on Wall Street he returned to decoration, his first love. At the age of twenty-one, in 1925, he went to work for Jansen, the noted design firm. He couldn&amp;#39;t have chosen a better place to learn his trade\u2014there he assisted St\u00E9phane Boudin, the most celebrated interior architect in the profession. After moving briefly to Ramsay, another decorating house, Samuel took over the management of Alavoine before starting his own firm. His clientele was built up by word of mouth in Paris, London, Lisbon, Munich, New York, Palm Beach and Los Angeles. All over the world people clamored for the &amp;quot;Samuel style.&amp;quot;\n\nBut what was it? Samuel himself confessed that even he was incapable of supplying a definition. What is certain is that he always sought to adapt his work to the spirit of each place and project and to the personalities of the people for whom it was intended. He never did the same thing twice.\n\nSamuel was one of the first true experts at mixing genres. He delighted in juxtaposing Louis XVI d\u00E9cor with abstract paintings or in placing Louis XIII cheek by jowl with Oriental objects. This eclecticism was reflected in his own home, a Louis XVI town house on Paris&amp;#39;s rue du Faubourg St.-Honor\u00E9. Visitors were amazed to discover a painting by Richard Lindner over an Empire table, Neoclassical chairs beside a table by Diego Giacometti and\u2014why not?\u2014armchairs made of brass and Plexiglas designed by Philippe Hiquily.\n\nYet if Henri Samuel was ready to sanction such flourishes, it was because he had not only perfect taste but also a perfect knowledge of the various styles and their history. When G\u00E9rald Van der Kemp engaged him to restore the Empire rooms at Versailles in 1957, it caused a great stir; the lords of the museum world had never previously resorted to outside advisers. But in this project and others Henri Samuel was a master at the art of conferring a measure of intimacy on historic surroundings. Indeed, intimacy was a key word in his scheme of things, and in recognition of this talent, the Metropolitan Museum in New York called on him to devise a mise-en-sc\u00E8ne for the Wrightsman and Linsky donations, two collections of decorative arts from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.\n\n&amp;quot;Henri Samuel was one of our last great decorators,&amp;quot; acknowledges the antiques dealer Didier Aaron, his friend and neighbor. &amp;quot;He had an incomparable gift for interpreting every epoch in his own special way.&amp;quot; At the Ch\u00E2teau de Ferri\u00E8res, he reconstructed the Second Empire at its most exuberant for Marie-H\u00E9l\u00E8ne and Guy de Rothschild. At the Ch\u00E2teau Margaux, an imposing Palladian structure built at the beginning of the nineteenth century in the heart of the Bordeaux region, he chose to evoke the First Empire with an atmosphere that was controlled without being austere. In the Paris apartment of Count and Countess Hubert d&amp;#39;Ornano, he recreated (with the countess) a fin de si\u00E8cle ambience using yards and yards of fabric to drape doors and windows. He selected colors, fresh or somber, according to the orientation of the rooms and the qualities of their light.\n\nThe use of surprising and unusual tonalities was a trademark, as were quilted upholstery on chairs, mounds of cushions and a profusion of rare and curious bibelots. The results were showy and at the same time warmly welcoming\u2014and perhaps it is in this that Henri Samuel&amp;#39;s touch is most instantly recognizable. He believed a design could be counted a success only if nobody suspected that a decorator had been involved."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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