Born and raised in Prague, Blanka wore long, airy dresses and flower-strewn hats and often cooked Czech stews and Hungarian goulash in the stone-floored kitchen, which is warmed by a huge brick-lined fireplace because the house lacks central heating. The bright green paneled walls of a second-floor bathroom are decorated with her renderings of old-fashioned roses, which she copied from a set of antique teacups. “They created their own little island disconnected from the local scene, which was quite conservative at the time,” says Carla, who has been a director of the London-based P.R. agency Albany Arts Communications since 2015. “I don’t know what local people thought. To me, it was normal.”