Tea at Trianon: A Chair Restored

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, March 2, 2015

A Chair Restored

From 3-D Print:

3D printing is once again playing an integral role in the world of art and artifacts. In this instance, Zoe Allen, Senior Gilded Furniture and Frames Conservator, and Phil James, a technician at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London, set out to restore a chair that once belonged to Marie Antoinette, the last Queen of France. The chair will be displayed in the new Europe 1600 to 1800 galleries scheduled to open later in 2015 at the V&A. It has been reupholstered a number of times; it was also re-gilded and re-painted. The most recent alteration was in the 1970s, when it was painted a grey-blue color and upholstered in a blue fabric.

The chair was part of a larger suite of lavish furniture produced in 1788, just one year preceding the French Revolution, by Jean-Baptiste-Claude Sené for Marie Antoinette’s palace in Saint Cloud, just to the west of Paris. The furniture was painted and also gilded by Louis-François Chatard. Both men were principal chair craftsmen and gilders to Marie Antoinette and her husband, King Louis XVI. The restored chair, like other pieces in the suite, bears the maker’s stamp.

Individual pieces in the suite are in different collections, including the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the Versailles Palace in France. The Victoria and Albert Museum has a second chair, which was not restored and, instead, serves as an example of the transformation of the object through the centuries.

Researchers at the Met Museum discovered that the chair (and the entire suite) had been originally upholstered. The fabric was a white, hand-embroidered floral print, which was still present on a fire screen, also part of the original suite.

They also found that the carved woodwork was originally partly gilded and painted white so that it matched the fabric. This inspired the V&A and Ms. Allen to consider a restoration that was more historically accurate. (Read more.)