
Build your own 18th-century wig at V&A website.
Build your own 18th-century wig at V&A website.
François Boucher
The Four Seasons: Winter
1755
New York, The Frick Collection
A buzzer for champagne in a rococo frame.
Because…. why not?
Get your very own champagne buzzer, silent or ringing, at this Etsy shop.
(Whether or not it brings you champagne with white-glove service, well..)
Some of the highlights from the European art wing of the Huntington Library’s art collection:
What an amazing repository of historical manuscripts and artworks! Combined with the gorgeous gardens, the Huntington Library is well worth a trip to Pasadena.
/ˌmiːz ɒn aˈbɪːm/
Containment of an entity within another identical entity : image of an image
Infinite repetition of reflected image when two mirrors face each other
(photo from weekend trip to the J. Paul Getty Museum)
Located between the chambers of the Queen and the King on the lower level of the château de Fontainebleau is one of Marie-Antoinette’s private boudoirs commissioned by Louis XVI.
The silver boudoir (“boudoir argent”) was decorated by the Rousseau brothers in 1786 in the antique style. The boudoir is named after the silver background on which various arabesque designs, incorporating floral motifs, animals, classical figures, are painted. These silver panels are set within gold frames, creating an intense shimmer in the space.
One of Marie Antoinette’s favorite cabinetmakers, Jean Henri Riesener provided the furniture pieces for this space.
The roll-top desk and the trough-shaped table are lined with mother-of-pearl, their iridescence and classicizing motifs complementing the metallic sheen and the overall decorative style of the boudoir.
This extraordinary room also features four pairs of overdoor sculptures, representing female personifications of various arts and sciences, such as music, theater, and astronomy. Each figure holds the attributes of one or two of the nine muses.
These are all my guesses on what these figures could represent, but it is interesting that there are eight figures holding the emblems of the nine muses.
Does this suggest that the intended occupant of this space, Marie Antoinette, was to complete the iconographic program as one of the muses? If one of these figures is a hybrid of two muses, that would mean that this boudoir is the queen’s very own Parnassus where she surrounds herself with a divine entourage..
A private, intimate space where a woman can enjoy music, conversation, and company of her closest companions. Whatever the precise intention/identification for the sculptural program might have been, I’d say this is definitely a boudoir fit for a queen.
One of the the most curious things in the house museum Nissim de Camondo in Paris (see my previous post here) is the porcelain closet attached to the dining room.
Walk through the door to the left of the fireplace, and voilà! You’re in the porcelain closet.
Shelves after shelves of beautifully pristine dinner, coffee, and tea service! The star of this porcelain fantasy is the “service Buffon,” a porcelain dinner set created at the manufacture de Sèvres around 1784.
The name “Buffon” refers to George-Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon (1707-88), the French naturalist, famous for his Histoire naturelle, the wildly popular and hugely influential encyclopedia cataloguing the knowledge of all known species of fauna and flora. His books were accompanied by thousands of engraved plates that illustrate natural history specimens.
Each of these porcelain dinner pieces features a distinct exotic bird species, inspired by the plates of Buffon’s Histoire naturelle des oiseaux (Natural History of the Birds).
The gold-trimmed illustrations of birds are set against green background with the pattern of dotted circles, called l’oeil-de-perdrix (eye-of-partridge). Some pieces also display grisaille cameos of antique profile busts.
Imagine, in the time before digital photography and Google Image, a magnificent dinner served on these plates and bowls. Imagine the delight of uncovering these images of exotic birds as one works through the meal. Imagine the air in the dining room, thick with fascination and curiosity for these earthly, yet otherworldly creatures and the alternate universe they seem to occupy..
Exploring arts & fashions throughout the past two centuries
Ryan Fisico - Luxury and Menswear Blogger
American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies
Stop In For Snippets of 18th and 19th Century History
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“In a machine age, dressmaking is one of the last refuges of the human, the personal, the inimitable.” — Christian Dior
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Savoring history's repast. Discovering flavors not lost but forgotten
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Super Sleuths who blog about anything and everything to do with the Georgian Era