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 SupperTag: Royal Courtiers
One of my favorite group of fictive characters for my literary design or literary travel adventures is the royal courtiers of France.
I love to place them in room settings I’ve seen that make me think they would feel right at home, as was the case with Ally Coulter’s salon at Holiday House NYC in 2014. I immediately thought how Catherine de Vivonne, or Marquise Rambouillet, would have taken to the space—her Chambre Bleue salon still regarded as one of the most successful ones in French history.
For this literary design adventure, I speak about Rambouillet’s talents as a designer and an interior architect—she would inspire generations of French architects—and note the design of her famous bedroom in which her salons were held—the blue velvet wall panels framed in gold and silver. I set the scene in Coulter’s room with “She was a quintessential entertainer and she hated the cold, so I can see her now, covered in the sumptuous throw on one of the Fendi Casa sofas, enjoying the fire while one of her most musically inclined habitués, Angélique Paulet, sang and played the piano.” How does the evening progress?
The Fabric of Design
In their introduction to The Decoration of Houses, Edith Wharton and Ogden Codman, Jr., write, “In the middle ages, when warfare and brigandage shaped the…
View More The Fabric of DesignEudora Welty Finds Her Voice
When a writer begins to grapple with how to mine the outside world for inspiration, the process can be challenging. In her memoir, One Writer’s…
View More Eudora Welty Finds Her VoiceMy 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 ListA Conversation on Trends in Textiles
I’m thrilled to announce that I am producing the first in my Modern Salonnière series of events during High Point Market next month. With this…
View More A Conversation on Trends in TextilesA 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 VarenneHenry VIII’s Cult of Cloth
A trip to Frankfurt to attend Heimtextil a week from today has inspired me to share one of my favorite anecdotes about Henry VIII and…
View More Henry VIII’s Cult of ClothVigée Le Brun’s Passion for Painting
A Passion for Painting Billowing ruched fabric, pointy toes of dainty shoes visible from beneath flounced skirts hemmed in gold fringes and ornate trims. A bejeweled…
View More Vigée Le Brun’s Passion for PaintingTransitory 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 SpacesHeaven Shall Be Here
In the film A Little Chaos, Alan Rickman, who plays an unlikely Louis XIV, declares, “Heaven shall be here.” He’s speaking of a ballroom he…
View More Heaven Shall Be Here