From the outside, Ma Cocotte resembles a solid, if rather chic, workmen's canteen a "Monopoly house, " in Mr. Starck's words with its redbrick ground level beneath a gray zinc first floor.
So it is especially enlightening to hear how he chose Ma Cocotte's furnishings, many of which are from the melting-pot period of the 1940s up to 1955, when Scandinavian and especially American influences began to filter into France.