Catherine Scotto’s journey to discover the owners of French châteaux listed as heritage sites in locales throughout the country can be described as nothing less…
View More French Chateau StyleTag: classical antiquity
Classical antiquity may seem a far-fetched subject for someone who writes about design in the modern era but think about this: every product that is designed today has ancestry to it, which we call provenance in the design world. The shapes of furniture, the motifs used in furnishings and architecture, the combinations of materials identified so long ago that are still used today: so many of the examples in these categories had roots in classical antiquity.
One of my posts that makes such a strong point for the influence of the ancients is My Porcelain Bucket List. In it, I quote Eleanor P. DeLorme, the author of Garden Pavilions and the 18th Century French Court, who notes so many of the design narratives explored by the ancien regime in France were influenced by the ancient Greeks and Romans. “The banal statement has too often been made that the Queen and her ladies were ‘playing at being milkmaids,’” DeLorme notes, “but to see the preoccupation with dairies in these terms was patently absurd, as the Rambouillet Laiterie imagery bears out.” This is because the dairy was to provide courtiers with an experience on par with ones the ancients would have had when enjoying the milk, cheese, butter and cream they produced in their dairies.
The Paris of a Pagan
This essay examining the military career of the last pagan emperor while he resided in Paris is included in my most recent book The Modern…
View More The Paris of a PaganThe Fashionable Grecian Supper
This essay about a fashionable Grecian supper held by Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun is included in my book The Modern Salonnière. The 34 other essays in…
View More The Fashionable Grecian SupperThe New Face of Religious Zeal
As I circle the domed space, I approach the front of the pulpit for the third time. I can’t believe how perfect it is that…
View More The New Face of Religious ZealExploring Frankfurt with Goethe
I am returning to Frankfurt am Main next week to attend Heimtextil for the second time, an experience I truly enjoyed last year for the…
View More Exploring Frankfurt with GoetheMy Porcelain Bucket List
When I am planning literary design adventures, I look for experiences that give me the feeling of transcendence—encounters during which I am conscious of having…
View More My Porcelain Bucket ListTransitory Spaces
The beginning of one of Napoléon Bonaparte’s earliest letters to Joséphine de Beauharnais simply oozes sensuality: “Seven in the morning. I awaken full of you…the…
View More Transitory SpacesRewriting the Myth of Pandora
I’ve always been fascinated by the myth of Pandora because the most widely accepted explanation of this parable—that feminine curiosity “is responsible for all the…
View More Rewriting the Myth of PandoraDining with History
A month from Sunday, I’ll be winging my way to Paris to attend Maison & Objet, and I’m thrilled to say I’ve been invited to…
View More Dining with HistoryKips Bay Show House
“The house is one of the greatest powers of integration for the thoughts, memories and dreams of mankind,” wrote Gaston Bachelard in The Poetics of…
View More Kips Bay Show House