SALONNIÈRE PAPER IS
a biannual culture and trend publication
In the spirit of Salonnières, the hostesses of meaningful gatherings, we use the salon structure in both IRL and URL formats, to extend conversations around nature and culture, to give context for a more beautiful life.
A flourishing salon includes:
• SUBJECT MATTER in the form of literature, art, philosophy, politics, current events
• LIVE ENTERTAINMENT in the form of dance, theater, music, lecture
• SUSTENANCE in the form of food and drink
• GATHERING in the form of guests to discuss said subject matter, watch said entertainment, and consume said sustenance
• HOSTING AND MEDIATION in the form of a capable woman; a salonnière
PAST GATHERINGS
DINNER WITH FOR THE CORPSE
As an extension of Salonnière Paper, we created an experiential dinner with Los Angeles-based @forthecorpse/For The Corpse that explores materiality as a vehicle for ritual and connection, while centering reciprocity with nature and the role beauty plays in sustaining hope.
Read more about The Table as Landscape in Salonnière Paper 02
REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PRESENT
As an extension of our trend and culture experience Salonnière Paper, we created an experiential dinner with Los Angeles-based @forthecorpse that traced the visual expression of the scallop shell and its symbolism in food and life. This project was featured in Monocle The Entrepreneurs issue 5.
WHAT IS A DINNER PARTY?
This excerpt from @judy.chicago ‘s The Dinner Party preface, sets a place for unsung women in history (including Salonnière Natalie Clifford Barney) while also making a “powerful argument for the importance of these traditionally feminine artistic practices, which have been unfairly relegated to the realm of craft”.
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Read more about The Dinner Party in Salonnière Paper 01
ISSUE 02
Salonnière Paper 02: Time Made Visible is a 40-page, full-color broadsheet that investigates time as a material condition that is shaped through process and exposure rather than linear progression. The issue centers on practices that register duration: lumen photography as an index of light; sculpture understood through erosion; spolia as the recontextualization of architectural remnants; salt as the slow accumulation of minerals. Together, these materials frame time as something embodied and accrued.
Through essays, visual studies, and a material-based salon, Paper 02 examines the table as landscape and the salon as a site of the continuous present. Drawing from historic craft traditions and Gertrude Stein’s theory of ongoingness, the issue positions the Salonnière as a curator of conditions holding space for dialogue and perception. Maison Bodega emerges as both subject and site: a place where material renders time visible.
ISSUE 01
Salonnière Paper 01: An Introduction is a 40-page, full color broadsheet that explores the relationship between public + private space as it relates to the historic salon format, Maison Bodega’s life as a live/work space as well as the biomimetic spiral shape and its many structural and aesthetic implications. The shell grotto, a space for introspection, anchors the metaphors of the interior/exterior while a scallop shell themed dinner with For The Corpse, shows how the madeleine came to be, Proust’s historic relationship with the tiny cake’s dunk into Tilluel tea and how the roads of the Camino de Santiago remind us that there are many paths to one destination.
A Published Tête-à-tête
A group chat among a few of our favorite (and unexpected) salonnières spanning five centuries.
Despite the salon’s etymological origin and association with French society of the 17th and 18th centuries,
versions of salonnières can be found all over the world, throughout history. Salonnières bond over hybridities of public and private spheres.
Societal Role → CAREER (public) RECREATION (private)
Bodies of Knowledge → WORLDLY (public) SPIRITUAL (private)
Place → WORK (public) HOME (private)
Distribution of Thoughts and Writing → PUBLICATION (public) DIARY (private)
Salonnières reach across spectrums to hold public spheres in the left hand and private spheres in the right. To pull at both ends is to question binary opposition. To pull at both ends is to evoke both admiration and disrespect. These women are united in their missions, across time and space, as salonnières.
For many significant female authors throughout history, writing in a diary was encouraged as an appropriate feminine pastime, but publishing was scandalous, as it brought a recreational pursuit from the private to the public sphere. It allowed women to earn monetary and cultural value from their thoughts, feelings and ideas, but any positive popularity gained from this endeavor was often coupled with criticism.
Below, we read the direct words of nine women, whose births span five centuries, in homes across the world. Stitched together in dialogue, forming a group chat of adjacencies, they speak of frustrations and delights.
