Memories of a greek trip, Summer 1990E I DIPTYQUE PARIS

Yves Coueslant and Desmond Knox-Leet, two of diptyque’s three founders, were keen travelers. In 1960, they set off on a Mediterranean odyssey that had something of the allure of intrepid expeditions into uncharted territory. They explored Greece, for which they had an enormous passion. They visited Athens, Troy, Delphi, Olympia, Mycenae, and Epidaurus … until they found at last their favorite spot, what Desmond called “the landscape of the soul”: Mount Pelion. On this Mount Pelion, at Méliès in Thessalia, they rented a holiday house four years in succession. To reach the sea every day they would walk through a grove of wild fig trees, heated by the burning sun. When they came back, Desmond gave Christiane Montadre-Gautrot, third founder of diptyque, a box containing the concentrated essence of happiness: a dried fig leaf, with beneath a series of little numbered packages, each containing a “treasure” such as a fragment of marble from the Acropolis or a shard of pottery from Mycenae