The Art of Corporate Success by Ken Auletta

Author:Ken Auletta [Auletta, Ken]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504018593
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

8

ROOTS

For a hundred and thirty years, the Riboud family has owned a 1300-acre estate, La Carelle, which is fifty-five miles north of Lyons, in the Beaujolais region of France. The fields and woodlands and rolling hills of this estate form a checkerboard of orange and yellow leaves, green pastures, and brown earth. The farmland is rimmed by dirt paths that meander into groves of linden, birch, fir, pine, American red oak, wild cherry, and mountain ash. The estate includes eight farms, each with a simple farmhouse of earth-colored brick, built in the Romanesque style that was popular six centuries ago. La Carelle is the country home of Jean Riboud.

The main house is a twenty-six-room stone structure, also Romanesque in style, shaded by giant redwood trees. In the center of the house is an atrium with a green-blue-and-black mosaic floor, from which six white marble columns rise, supporting a balcony. A tinted-glass skylight serves as a canopy for this imposing space. The furniture is all of the period of Louis XIV; on the walls are 18th-century French paintings by Vernet and Rigaud. On the main floor are eight wood-paneled rooms, including a billiard room; a dining room with an immense hand-carved table and 19th-century French paintings; and three libraries containing leather-bound books, a number of sculptures and oil paintings, and five generations of family photographs.

In a stone cellar below are a medieval spit and a baking oven; a space where laundry used to be boiled; a small chapel, where Hélène Riboud, Jean’s mother, had a Mass said for Jean and his bride, Krishna, when they got married, in 1949; and a wine cellar with perhaps a thousand bottles of Chiroubles Beaujolais—the local wine—and rows of Bordeaux and champagnes acquired by Riboud’s grandparents. There is also a modern touch: a screening room, with movie projector, portable canvas chairs, and a felt blanket covering the stone floor.

At the top of a stone staircase that leads from the main floor to the balcony and the bedrooms are several pieces of contemporary African sculpture. The master bedroom is more modern in style than the downstairs rooms, with loud orange draperies and a bright green bedspread. Krishna Riboud has redecorated this room, and is redecorating the guest rooms on the second floor and her workrooms in the attic. On the door of one workroom is a plaque that reads INNER SANCTUM. A door leading to the smaller workroom bears a sign reading ENTER WITH AWE. These two rooms contain Indian, African, and Japanese artifacts and rugs, and file cabinets filled with photographs and textile samples that Krishna, who is an expert on ancient Chinese silks, uses in her work.

Although La Carelle is not home to Krishna Riboud the way the Ribouds’ six-room garden apartment, on the Avenue de Breteuil, in Paris, is, she has put her personal stamp on it. “I have never met a woman like her—she could be living in a dreary hotel room and after two days she would bring it to life,” Riboud says of her.

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