Transitory Spaces

A bundle of letters rests on a side table in Garrow Kedigian’s space in the Kips Bay Decorator Show House. Image Saxon Henry.

The beginning of one of Napoléon Bonaparte’s earliest letters to Joséphine de Beauharnais simply oozes sensuality: “Seven in the morning. I awaken full of you…the memory of yesterday’s intoxicating evening has left no rest to my senses…Sweet and incomparable Joséphine, I draw from your lips, from your heart, a flame which consumes me…A thousand kisses, but do not give...