CLASSIC BEIRUT HERITAGE AND GLAMOUR

A COLLECTOR AND ANTIQUE S DEALER, THE LATE HOME, BEIT CHABEB I N BEIRUT, IS A COMING JOE TOHMES GREATEST PASSION PROJECT, HIS TOGETHER OF THE RUSTIC AND THE REFINED.

- COSMO BROCKWAY

"There are two elements to Joe's style, playful and eclectic but also that of a thoughtful historian," says Joe Tohme's cousin and former business partner

Ramy Boutros, as we stand in the courtyard of the late antiques dealer's home outside Beirut. A revered and wellknown figure in the decorative arts world, Tohme was a collector par excellence with an unerring eye for the best Orientalist and Levantine antiques-and for creating striking vignettes.

On a road that leads towards the old coastal highway from Beirut to Batroun, Tohme's greatest passion project is halfhidden behind a forest of flower-covered vines. Beit Chabeb, a handsome stone house, gives little away at first glance, its stoic façade protecting what lies within.

Having once been a Catholic curate's house, according to Tohme's younger brother, Nabil, the building was in a sorry state when he stumbled upon it. "In fact, it was only one storey high; my brother had a vision to restore the house to its original height. The ground floor is 18th century, while the remains of the upper floor were 19th century." Ever exacting, Tohme "scoured reclamation yards and salvage sources around Beirut for architectural pieces that exactly matched the period of each floor", recounts Boutros.

"For him, it was like writing a poem with cadence and form, or perhaps the thrill of a puzzle. He loved a challenge." Tohme was born into an old Lebanese Druze family that is highly influential in the fine-art world, and visited galleries and antiques dealers with his bourgeois mother from a young age. His father was a well-known doctor and author, and the Franco-Levantine society Tohme grew up in was a near-vanished world of courtly manners and elegant interiors, the creak of parquet floors and cocktail chatter bouncing between French and English.