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Making a Parisian magic carpet
Un tapis Smyrne (A Smyrna carpet) in a Parisian stairwell. One of the most important elements of a Beauty and the Beast story is the rose that sets off the whole tale. And then of course there are the enchanted gardens. So what do you do when your Beauty and the Beast retelling takes place in a typical 19 th -century Parisian apartment building, mostly in the dead of winter, in a moment of history when gardens weren’t exactly a priority and public parks were often used as grazing grounds for the city’s stock of edible animals? For Hearts at Dawn , my Beauty and the Beast retelling, I decided to use a magic carpet. Many Haussmannian apartment buildings in Paris today have carpets that run up the length of their stairways. Although their colors and motifs vary, a good deal of them feature flowers inspired by Eastern and Middle Eastern motifs. So, there would be my flowers, my garden. The only problem was, try as I might, I haven’t been able to establish with certainty that these