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FINDERS KEEPERS | MASTERS & MUSES | WORLD OF CABANA
At 22 Rue Mazarine, Paris, stands Eric Grangeon Rare Books — a singular sanctuary where ancient manuscripts and works of art are gathered with meticulous discipline and discernment by collector and rare book dealer Éric Grangeon. After years practicing law, he has devoted his life to the expertise and sale of rare books, manuscripts and objects of curiosities. He shares his 'finders keepers'.
BY CAMILLA GINEVRA BONUGLIA | MASTERS & MUSES | OCTOBER 2025
The atmosphere at Eric Grangeon Rare Books is hushed, almost liturgical. Soft light falls across a remarkable variety of objects: archaic wooden masks from the Venetian mountains’ carnivals of the early 20th century; kimono design folios where ink once met silk; Japanese embossed wallpaper scrolls; volumes authored by Napoleon’s brother; a striking Christ with the Twelve Apostles, and, at the heart of it all, a manuscript of the 18th century — exquisitely calligraphed and bound in elegant morocco leather.
As Grangeon explains, what might appear eclectic is anything but arbitrary. “Eclecticism only appears to be free choice. In reality, it demands discipline and rigor — without them, one risks collapsing into chaos.” His vision is not accumulation, but orchestration: every object chosen with intent, each deepening the polyphony of the whole.
My Greatest Find: La Sculptrice by Gérard Choain
“The piece that moves me most is a green-patinated plaster sculpture by Gérard Choain, the French sculptor. A complete artist, he devoted much of his life to monumental and traditional sculpture, yet was also a remarkable draftsman — an admirer of Donatello and Dürer — who enriched his oeuvre with countless sanguine drawings, many of them tributes to the beauty of women musicians.
"This work, La Sculptrice (The Sculptress), is remarkable first for its subject, which is curiously rare in art history, where representations most often focus on male artists. The sculpture is strikingly balanced and elegant; its form unfolds like a subtle narrative, guiding the eye from bottom to top. At first, one notices the unusually thick base, with its slightly rough treatment of matter. From there, the gaze is drawn upward, following a refined line along the folds of the work blouse, toward the neck, and finally to the face — pure, serene, with eyes barely sketched, as if lost in distant imagination.
"This ascending movement can be read as an allegory of artistic creation itself: beginning with the raw clay of matter and gradually rising toward the immaterial.”
Eric's Greatest Find: 'La Sculptrice' by Gérard Choain
The piece I’ll keep forever:
“None. I am not someone who clings to objects. I purchase them on impulse, yes, but always through a discipline of choice, a rigor of selection. My allegiance to eclecticism is deliberate: it is not, for me, the trivial piling up of disparate curiosities, but a cultivated principle whose roots lie in its Greek origin, eklektikos.
In our time, eclecticism has itself become a form of resistance — resistance to conformity, to repetition, to the already-seen, to everything that dulls our gaze and drives us toward sameness. It compels a vigilance of curiosity, an urgency to refresh our perception, to resist stasis. It is, at once, a discipline of thought, a form of hygiene, and, above all, an aesthetics.”
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Cabana Magazine N24
Covers by Morris & Co.
This issue will transport you across countries and continents where craft and culture converge. Evocative travel portfolios reveal Japan's elegant restraint, Peru's sacred churches ablaze with color, and striking architecture in a fading Addis Ababa. Inspiring minds from the late Giorgio Armani to Nikolai von Bismarck spark curiosity, while exclusive homes—from the dazzling Burghley House in England and an Anglo-Italian dream in Milan, to a Dionysian retreat in Patmos and a historic Pennsylvania farmhouse—become portals that recall, evoke and transport.
