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Tucked between a George II mahogany breakfront secretaire bookcase and a series of manuscript and watercolor maps showing the waterways of Venice, Clausen found a type of antiquated nautical map known as a portolan chart.

Daddy would play cassette tapes on the silver sound system he kept encased in a breakfront chest.

And they reflect my identity in part because they connect me to my paternal grandmother, a particularly gifted collector who kept neatly packed pouches of jewelry in a drawer, tidy piles of stylish Italian leather handbags in her closet, menageries of small ceramic animals and miniature furniture in her grand dining room breakfront.

Still, the place is minimally outfitted, which is the point: A tall armoire from the 1970s by the Lille-based design duo Guillerme et Chambron is topped by a pair of midcentury ceramic lamps with custom rush-covered shades that call to mind bales of hay in a Provence meadow; in the kitchen sits a Pierre Cardin table from the 1970s near a 1960 Paul McCobb breakfront with wicker sliding doors.

The holidays can be tricky when one has begun to reflexively assume the posture of being pinned under the breakfront as the crazy racist grandpa shrieks year-round.