Marble muscles ripple—the stone carver’s feat charismatic in its unselfconsciousness. Crystals dangle, their effervescence gleaming for centuries as blown baubles from the past. Mother-of-pearl inlay…
View More Ateliers of EuropeTag: fine antiques
I’m a fan of fine antiques. I make it a point to not only seek them out at antique shows, I visit museums to see how curators have arranged vignettes and entire rooms that have been broken down and reassembled as they originally were.
One example of a sighting of such a magnificent example of fine antiques was the Widener Room at the National Gallery of Art. The Rococo interior was clad in an aged boiserie originally installed in La Château de la Norville about 20 miles south of Paris. The room seemed oddly intimate and I couldn’t put my finger on why until it occurred to me that seeing the raw boiserie was like seeing a woman without her make-up.
There were hints of her adorned self in the lushness of Christophe Huet’s paintings inset into the transoms, the gilt-framed compositions still gleaming as they would have when lavish fêtes were underway, but there was an air of vulnerability about the room that would not have occurred to me if the high-gloss had been intact.
I also had the thrill of seeing a table à écrire belonging to Marie Antoinette in person. Was this really the writing table upon which letters like these would have been penned? I wondered, in awe of the petite desk I found tucked within a cluster of galleries on the main floor of the museum. I have a number of posts under this tag so if you’ve enjoyed this snippet, I hope you’ll stop by and read about other fine antiques I’ve spotted on my travels.
The Tapestry of History
In just a few hours, the modern ideal of a fairy tale wedding will take place at Windsor Castle. A trip I took to the…
View More The Tapestry of HistoryMadame Récamier and the Art of Reclining
Jeanne-Françoise Julie Adélaïde Bernard, known after her marriage as Juliette Récamier, was born on December 4, 1777—240 years ago yesterday. Had she lived during modern…
View More Madame Récamier and the Art of RecliningA Backward Glance on rue de Varenne
The narrow sidewalks push their black iron batons up out of the ground to protect the buildings hemming them; the rain turns the cobblestones to…
View More A Backward Glance on rue de VarenneTransitory 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 PandoraI Met Virginia Woolf in This Room
Who else is relieved that Lady Edith Crawley, played by Laura Carmichael, is finally finding happiness on Downton Abbey? Having binged on all of the…
View More I Met Virginia Woolf in This RoomDining 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 HistoryOne Special Summer with Jackie O
Hegel’s caveat “history teaches us nothing” may be relevant in cultural and philosophical realities but in the design world the statement is far from succinct.…
View More One Special Summer with Jackie OFurnishing Pastimes of Henry VIII
As I mentioned in my last Improvateur article presenting a brief history of Hampton Court Palace, I launched into a furnishings fantasy when I heard…
View More Furnishing Pastimes of Henry VIII