CAT’S PLAYSetsuko in her

customary kimono and in a paper and lace cat mask that

she made for a costume ball.

Styled by Hannes Hetta

which is known for handmade ��th- and ��th-century-inspired ceramics with a milky white glaze, unveiled two collections of tableware and objects by Countess Setsuko Klossowska de Rola. �e more whimsical collection, named a�er Setsuko herself, includes tree-shaped candlesticks, a tray with a gallery of acanthus leaves, and an incense burner in the shape of a seated cat; the smoke �om the incense wa�s disconcertingly out of the animal’s mouth.

�e delicacy, mystery, and humor of these objects are traits shared by their designer, a petite, serene woman who dresses in the traditional kimono of her native Japan, a country she le� in the ����s when she married Count Balthasar Klossowski de Rola, the painter better known as Balthus. She was �� to his �� when they met and was an amateur artist at that point, but the ��-year age di�erence was irrelevant. In addition to an a�ection for cats, which appear in her work as well as in his, she shared Balthus’s fierce love of beauty—“as if it were the truth,” she says.

Setsuko’s second Astier de Villatte collection, of dinner, salad, and soup plates, is called Grand Chalet. It was inspired by the place in which we are sitting on a sunny-turned-stormy June morning, an outsize ����s wooden house in the tiny Swiss town of Rossinière (about an hour east of Lausanne, near Gstaad). It is here, in what is o�cially the largest chalet in Switzerland, that Setsuko lived with Balthus for nearly three decades. �e imposing house, her role as the o�cial keeper of the Balthus flame, and the title of countess (owed to her late husband’s aristocratic Polish roots) might suggest a certain imperiousness. But Setsuko, who prefers to go by her first name, displays a down-to-earth demeanor, a sly sense of humor, and an inexhaustible curiosity. When I visited her at the Grand Chalet, I reminded her that we had met two months earlier during the launch of her collections in Milan, certain that she would not remember. A�er all, she must have met scores of people that week. But no, Setsuko remembered me, as well as the bowl that I had particularly admired. As Benoît Astier de

Villatte, one of the company’s two co-founders, says, “She’s totally present.”

For Setsuko the Grand Chalet is part home, part studio, and part cabinet of curiosities. �e place is so massive that she cannot recall the precise number of rooms it contains. When she and Balthus first visited, in the ����s, it had been operating since the ����s as a hotel, with a guest register that included such luminaries as Victor Hugo. �e atmosphere, Setsuko says, was “very Agatha Christie. You would imagine Miss Marple in the corner, drinking tea.” She liked it right away, and as luck would have it the owner had been trying unsuccessfully to sell the o�cial heritage site and o�ered it to Balthus and Setsuko with all its contents. �e price was more than they could a�ord, so Balthus approached his dealer, Pierre Matisse, who in ���� put up the money in return for the artist’s producing several paintings.

�e couple set about restoring the house to its original appearance, tearing down partitions that had subdivided its many rooms into smaller guest quar-ters, sandblasting paint o� the knotty pine paneling, and reupholstering the antique sofas and chairs. On one side of the drawing room, the chamber that Hugo once occupied is now a dining room; on the other side is Setsuko’s painting studio. Her work, which blends both Japanese and Western traditions in a sometimes surreal way, hangs throughout the house. (Balthus’s studio, which is in an annex that was once a garage, remains intact, but since his death, in ����, his paint-ings have been transferred to an art storage facility.)

Over the years the house has become something of a pilgrimage site for admirers of Balthus, �om Alberto Giacometti to the Dalai Lama to David Bowie. Framed snapshots in the dining room include one of Setsuko with Bono. �e Irish rock star and philanthropist became close to Balthus and Setsuko a�er visiting Rossinière, and on the day of Balthus’s

IN APRIL OF THIS YEAR, THE PARISIAN COMPANY ASTIER DE VILLATTE,

SWISS MADEPieces �om the

Setsuko collection for Astier de

Villatte. Opposite: �e facade of the

Grand Chalet, the largest building

of its kind in Switzerland.

N OV E M B E R � � � � | ���

��� | TOWNANDCOUNTRYMAG.COM

HOUSE OF SPIRITSClockwise �om above: A pitcher, bowls, and a cheese knife shaped like a paintbrush, all �om the Setsuko collection; a Tibetan cabinet in the drawing room of the Grand Chalet; a Setsuko collection incense burner shaped like a cat, an animal that figures prominently in her work and the paintings of Balthus; Setsuko in Balthus’s studio, which is just as he le� it; one of Setsuko’s paintings �om the ’��s greets visitors in the chalet’s entryway.

DRAWING ROOMClockwise �om above:When Balthus and Setsuko restored the former hotel in the ����s, they reupholstered the original furniture; Setsuko with a prepared canvas in Balthus’s studio; the tranquil garden of the Grand Chalet; a puppet made by Setsuko—this one features a woman on one side and a fox on the other.

funeral Setsuko—who wanted to be baptized a Catholic so that she could one day be close to Balthus “in another world”—asked Bono to be her godfather. (Her godmother is the interior designer Verde Visconti.) “He’s the most marvelous god-father. He gives me presents on my birthday and at Christmas,” Setsuko says with almost childlike glee. “And he comes to things when I invite him.” Such invitations have included a ���� meeting in England of the World Faiths Development Dialogue, an organization founded by the World Bank and the o�ce of the Archbishop of Canterbury, for which Setsuko designed the logo. “I have a chance to meet people at the most extraordinary moments,” she says.

Indeed, it was serendipity that led Setsuko to her work for Astier de Villatte. Her daughter, Harumi Klossowska de Rola, a jewelry designer who lives in Paris, met Emilie Mazeaud, Astier’s former head of communications, and learned that there was a long-standing connection between Setsuko and Benoît Astier de Villatte. Benoît was born in ���� at the Villa Medici, the home of the French Academy in Rome, where his father, the sculptor and painter Pierre Carron, was a fellow—and where Balthus was the director �om ���� to ����, overseeing the restoration of the ��th-century villa. Setsuko, who had met Balthus in Japan in ���� (he was sent there by André Malraux, the French minister of cultural a�airs), came to Rome to live with him not long a�erward; the couple were married in ����. A�er learning that the little boy she had known decades earlier was producing ceramics, she called him, and within the year Setsuko’s collections were in the Astier de Villatte shop on Rue Saint Honoré. “It was as if our collaboration was destined,” she says. Ivan Pericoli (who co-founded the company in ����) told me later that the collaboration “was fast and easy. When di�culties happened, she said, ‘I love problems.’ ”

Despite her almost preternatural calm, Setsuko, now �� years old, says that she thrives on stress. She is the honor-ary president of the Fondation Balthus, and she attends exhibitions of her husband’s art all over the world, o�en giving lectures on his work. For those talks, she says, she makes an outline just �� to �� minutes in advance. A tight deadline, she believes, “helps me concentrate.” She is also a UNESCO Artist for Peace, a role she “adores”; she recently reviewed entries

in a contest for which children �om ��� countries submitted illustrated diaries that dealt with ecology. Examples of her paintings, ceramics, and her consid-erable collection of kimonos were recently exhibited in Luxembourg. Add to that an active social life when she is away �om Rossinière that includes art open-ings, fashion shows, and parties. “If she’s invited, she goes,” Pericoli says. “She’s never tired. We’re amazed by her energy.”

When it comes to her artwork, however, Setsuko prefers the Grand Chalet. “I require quiet to do my work,” she says. “I have my o�ce, my studio, and my sewing studio.” By her own admission she hates to throw anything away, but she puts the bits and pieces she saves “like a squirrel” to good use, making things like puppets (first for her daughter and now for her two grandchildren) or repairing clothes with patchwork or embroidery—a military jacket for her son-in-law, the photographer Benoît Peverelli, or a patchwork jean jacket for the writer �adée Klossowski de Rola, one of Balthus’s two sons �om his first marriage (and the widower of Loulou de la Falaise). Setsuko calls work like this “a mind vaca-tion” and adds that her interest in giving objects a second life—even if they’re only scraps of fabric or ribbon—relates to the Shinto religion, in which “everything has a soul.”

�ese days Setsuko is working on new objects for Astier de Villatte, including large pieces shaped like trees. She wants to design a flower vase and a salad bowl—an idea that came to her “because I need one for my house.” Her artistic sensibility, the idea of making everyday life more beautiful by way of art and design, is not only something she shared with Balthus; it is intrinsic to Japanese culture. �at, coupled with her belief that “you have to create joy and happiness, not receive it,” pervades everything Setsuko does. Yes, even a salad bowl. �

ARTIST AT WORKOpposite: Balthus

in ����. Below: Unused canvases

in his studio.

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