Tea at Trianon: Brilliant Spools

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, December 19, 2016

Brilliant Spools

From Victoria:

After twenty-three years of flying, Paulette Knight translated her air miles into yards upon yards of ribbon that decorate her San Francisco shop, The Ribbonerie. A former flight attendant for American Airlines during the industry’s fabled golden era, she wandered the arrondissements of Paris between flights, repeatedly drawn to the enchanted trimmings that festoon the city’s candy stores.

“I was a real Francophile and went to France on all my vacations,” says Paulette. “I saw this extraordinary French wired ribbon hanging in the windows, but it was just decoration—you couldn’t get it even if you bought a box of bonbons.” Following successive trips, she happened upon a place that supplied the Paris confiseries and was able to purchase a few coveted satins and grosgrains to take back home. Eventually, her keen eye for embellishment (she was a student of fashion design prior to her jet-setting days) would shift the direction of her career and lead her to a new venture within the French marketplace. (Read more.)

The North Coast said...: I must visit this delightful little shop when I travel to San Francisco. I'm a lover of fine ribbon myself, and spend a lot of time at an art supply store here in Chicago that stocks hundreds of varieties of exotic ribbons, many from France.; December 20, 2016 at 7:30:00 PM EST