In the heart of the bourgeois enclave of the Marais in Paris is a perfectly square room. A deep primal green velvet box.
In the centre of the jewel box room, emerging from the gloaming that is the permanent time zone of this theatrical space, is a small table that rests on four horns and is covered in monochrome animal skins.
To the side on a low Victorian armchair, a porcelain doll is exquisitely tied up in rope.
A hint. This is the only very slightly public room of the home of a woman who deals with some very private matters.
Designer, author, sexual anthropologist and exacting aesthete Betony Vernon has invited me for a glass of champagne in a box she calls Eden. I feel like I have signed up for a belle époque séance. Shortly the spirits will come rapping forth and I will have all the answers.
This may very well be the mood Betony wishes to evoke - a staged and conscious decorative choice calibrated to within the finest sensual inch to reflect her theories and practice of love making.
In a tooled leather case on the wall, her fine erotic jewellery collection, Paradise Found, is displayed.
Form meets function in the collection designed for pleasure both as objects to be worn and objects to be used.
It is just one aspect of her lovely mind; she has also penned a comprehensive lovers' manual called The Boudoir Bible (Rizzoli), and speaks on the subject in salons around the world.
Peek into her sublime universe on her Instagram account or visit the jewellery exhibition MEDUSA at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, where the Boudoir Box - a travelling version of her display case of erotic jewellery - is in a room of its own until today.
