A Romantic Manor House in Normandy

 

 

 

From House and Garden:

'It’s one of the most beautiful places in France,’ says Cordelia de Castellane of the Normandy village of Beaumont-en-Auge, situated a few miles south of the coastal town of Deauville. And just beyond the boundaries of this picture-postcard commune, set against the bucolic backdrop of the region’s farms, orchards and medieval fortresses, the Greek-French designer has recently completed the decoration of a charming country retreat, with parts of the distinctive building dating back to the 17th century.

The striking three-storey manoir has a traditional half-timber colombage façade and belongs to a literary couple who are longtime friends of Cordelia. ‘We share a love of dance and literature, particularly the works of Marcel Proust,’ explains Cordelia, who serves as artistic director of Dior Maison and Baby Dior. The 150-square-foot property unfolds across a trio of structures: alongside the main manor house – the interiors of which Cordelia describes as ‘super French’ – is a four-bedroom guest house with a more contemporary look, and a former rotisserie that now contains a palatial, beamed dining room.

Before making a decision to change a single thing, Cordelia spent some time staying alone in the house. This luxurious period of solitude proved fruitful. Immersing herself in the original spirit of the interiors and observing the movement of light across its rooms guided her approach to the layout and to the decoration, which is by turns calm and characterful. It is typical of Cordelia’s method. ‘I see the people, I feel the house – and it just comes to me,’ she says of how she brought this scheme to life. (Read more.)

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BREAKING: JD Vance Announces Task Force Has Uncovered Billions in Fraud

 From America First:

Vice President JD Vance delivered a striking update on the Trump administration’s fight against government fraud during a Cabinet meeting at Camp David, announcing that a task force he leads has identified $230 billion in fraudulent or improper payments perpetrated against the American people, with $56 billion of that amount already halted before it went out the door.

The announcement came during the first-ever live-streamed Cabinet meeting held at Camp David, a format that allowed Americans to watch the administration’s internal deliberations in real time. Vance, who has served as the chair of the Task Force to Eliminate Fraud since President Trump established it by executive order in March 2026, framed the findings as one of the clearest early wins of the administration’s broader push to root out waste and corruption in the federal government.

“Just since the beginning of the Fraud Task Force that I started under the president’s leadership and direction, we have identified $230 billion of fraud that’s being perpetrated against the American people, and we have halted already $56 billion of that,” Vance told the gathered Cabinet, according to multiple accounts of the meeting. (Read more.)

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An Ancient Civilization of Millions Once Flourished in the Amazon

 From Phys.org:

New research conducted using airborne laser scanning reveals that a multicultural civilization that flourished in southwestern Amazonia between 600 BCE and 850 CE was home to millions of people. Spanning roughly 183,000 square kilometers (71,000 square miles), the Aquiry civilization built large centers for political and ritual purposes. By surveying a representative section of the area, researchers identified the remains of more than 400 well-preserved sites of monumental ceremonial architecture, along with some later settlement sites.

Extrapolating their findings to the civilization's full territory, the researchers arrived at a cautious estimate of more than 20,000 ancient earthwork ceremonial centers. The largest known site covers 50 hectares (124 acres).

Comprehensive surveys and radiocarbon dating showed that the Aquiry territory—which makes up less than 3% of Greater Amazonia—was already home to 1.25–3 million people at the start of the first millennium. This finding challenges earlier, more conservative estimates of the population across the wider Amazon region, which have ranged between 1 million and 10 million. The Amazon's total population may have numbered in the tens of millions.

"Our findings overturn our understanding of the Amazon region's past," says the emeritus professor at the University of Helsinki who led the study published in Nature. (Read more.)

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Fra Angelico’s First Major Altarpiece Gets a Groundbreaking Repair

 

From Artnet:

Antonella Ranaldi, director of Florence and Prato’s cultural heritage office, called the restoration “a case study of the greatest interest that will serve as a model for restorers in the years to come.”

The work is considered Fra Angelico’s first major large-scale work. In the early 1420s, the budding painter-friar, née Guido di Pietro, entered the convent of San Domenico in Fiesole, a complex just north of Florence, where he was tasked with creating an altarpiece for the newly built monastery. In keeping with the fashions of the age, Fra Angelico created a late Gothic style triptych with a liberal use of gold, centering a serene depiction of the Virgin and Child alongside adoring angels and four haloed saints.

Time has not been kind to the San Domenico altarpiece. By 1501, 50 years after the artist’s death, the painter Lorenzo di Credi was commissioned with updating the work to contemporary tastes. He removed the partitions, downsized the Virgin’s throne, and replaced the gold grounding with a naturalistic landscape. Over the coming centuries, the altarpiece was broken up, its parts looted or sold on the antiques market—the original predella, for instance, now belongs to London’s National Gallery. Fra Angelico’s central panel remained at the convent, albeit damaged by haphazard restorations and eaten by wood-boring insects. (Read more.)

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Counterrevolution: Thirty Years of the Conservative Press

 From Mark Judge at Hot Air:

Conservative media has been engaging in hand-to-hand combat with the left for so long that sometimes we forget to pull the lens back and fully appreciate how much we have leveled the playing field. Thirty years ago, if a conservative got destroyed in the media, the only recourse was to submit a letter to the editor of the local Stasi press outlet, where it would be ignored or edited and buried in the paper a week later. Now conservative journalists can actually dismantle lies and even collapse things like a book launch by a major publisher for leftist journalists. 

    Part of what got me thinking about this was reading an advanced copy of the great new book by Victor Davis Hanson, The Counterrevolution: The Fall and Rise of Donald Trump and the MAGA Movement. The book doesn’t come out for a month, and I will have a fuller review then, but in terms of its overall message and how it diagnoses the media, it is a bull’s-eye. Hanson argues that Trump has been the most effective counterforce to the slow crawl of “progressive” politics over the last century - and that kneecapping the media was a crucial part of that. (Read more.)

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The American Revolution in Louisiana and West Florida

From Fellowship and Fairydust:

A few years ago, I was having lunch with my uncle when he said he had joined the Sons of the American Revolution. “But in the 1770s, our ancestors were already in Louisiana,” I said. “It belonged to Spain. How did we have an ancestor who fought for America?”

It turns out, we didn’t. We had an ancestor—a French immigrant to Louisiana—who fought for Spain. From 1779-1781, Spain aided the American cause by ousting the British from their holdings in West Florida, which included Pensacola and Mobile as well as the eastern bank of the Mississippi River from Manchac to Natchez. The name of the colony still resonates today in the “Florida Parishes,” the eight parishes of the State of Louisiana that were once part of West Florida. 

After the outbreak of the American Revolution in 1775, the fledgling United States campaigned to secure the support of European allies, especially Britain’s longtime enemies, France and Spain. Though the King of Spain was unwilling to form an alliance, the Spanish governor of Louisiana, Bernardo de Galvez, privately supported the American cause. He granted loans to American traders shipping military provisions northward from New Orleans and provided covert support to their convoys, which had to pass the British-held settlements on the eastern bank in order to reach American territory.

In 1777, the U.S. Congress rejected a plan to launch a full-scale assault against West Florida. But the Committee of Commerce (formerly the Secret Committee, the first American organization devoted to espionage) knew they had the tacit support of Governor Galvez in New Orleans. So they decided to send a small party of men down the Mississippi under the command of Captain James Willing, ostensibly to convey “public dispatches” to officials in Louisiana.

His real mission was to secure the river. (Read more.)

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Chemise à la Reine vs. Grande Robe Française

This simple style was introduced by Marie-Antoinette and, although she did not wear such a low neckline as shown in the fashion plate above, it still upset many people. The Queen intended the dress for quiet times at Trianon. Via Tiny Librarian:

Chemise à la Reine with bound sleeves, the neckline trimmed with a frill, Marlborough Hat wrapped with a wide ribbon striped in black and colour. (1784)

“Chemises” belonged to the category of simple and comfortable dress which was in vogue from about 1781 overall due to Marie Antoinette.

At the time, one said that an upper-body garment was made en chemise when “the beginning of the sleeves ended in two pieces which were added” (Dictionary of the abbé Jaubert, 1778).  One frequently finds in the notes of Mlle Bertin mentions such as “a piece en chemise of Italian gauze”, “a fichu-chemise* of Italian gauze”, etc.  On the date of the appearance of the “chemises à la reine”, Bachaumont fixes it for us in writing about the portraits of the Queen and Madame, by Vigée-Lebrun, shown in 1783: “The two princesses are en chemise, a costume invented recently for women.”

And he added, “Many people have found it inappropriate that these august personages are offered to the public in a garment reserved for the interior of their palace.”

(Read entire post.)

This gown is an example of the most formal attire possible, which the Queen was trying to get away from. However, people were more displeased by her simple attire than by her grand formal costume. More HERE. Share

Dictators for Life

From Tierney's Real News:

For the past decade, the fake news and liberals in America have been proclaiming that President Trump is trying to be a dictator for life, a King that can never be removed. That is a lie. That is BS propaganda from our enemies. The truth is that the REAL dictators are on the left and part of the Islamo-Communist Red-Green axis and this newsletter will PROVE that.

On Sunday night, in Nicaragua, Communist President Daniel Ortega stood in front of thousands of Sandinista loyalists at the 47th anniversary of the 1979 revolution and said what everyone already knew was true: there will be no more elections in Nicaragua. He finally admitted out loud that Nicaragua is a Communist dictatorship!

 “There won’t be any more elections here for them to try to seize the government and seize power. The days when parties backed by the Yankees and the Somocistas would return to power are over — never again.” (Read more.)

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Sacred Geometry and Gothic Rose Windows

 From  Laboratorio Fiore Scriptorium via Hilary White at The Sacred Images Project:

Geometry in the Middle Ages was not just calculation and measurement, but a sacred language capable of uniting heaven and earth, the visible and the invisible. Every line and proportion thus brought to life a prayer in stone, a tangible testimony of faith carved in numbers.

"Sacred Geometry and Gothic Rose Windows, from Architecture to Miniature": a course designed for those more comfortable with technical drawing than with hand-drawn. Originally offered a few years ago, it is now available again—upon request—for small groups of at least three people. (Read more.)

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