n-architecture:
A maple tree in Matibo, near Savigliano, in Piedmont, Sardinian Savoy
“Matibo is a delightful estate in the neighbourhood of Savigliano, close to Coni,2 in Piedmont. The beautiful maple tree, shown in our engraving, is one of the most elegant of ornaments. This tree is more than sixty years old. Someone had the idea, twenty-five or thirty years ago, to give it the shape of a little temple, and with ingenuity and patience the metamorphosis is complete.
You see that the elegant little structure has two stories. Each of the rooms is lit by eight windows, and it can easily hold twenty people. The floor, very sturdy, is made of boughs artfully interwoven; the leaves forming a natural carpet; roundabout, the greenery has formed dense high walls, where a great number of birds have come to fix their abode. The owner of Matibo took care not to disturb the joyful little singers: he has encouraged their trust, and all day long you can hear them chirp and hop about, heedless of the visitors, who are leaning on the windows and rustling the leaves.
Landscape architects give to trees pruned in the style of the maple tree of Matibo the general name of arbres belvéders,3 or tree houses.”
- An extract, translated into English by Susan Rhoads and Bill Thayer, from Le Magasin Pittoresque, published under the direction of M. Édouard Charton, Volume IX, Issue 49, Paris: Aux Bureaux d’Abonnement et de Vente, 1841; p. 385.
