Tea at Trianon: Inside the Chaumet Archive

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

Thursday, October 26, 2017

Inside the Chaumet Archive

From The Telegraph:

Chaumet’s founder Marie-Etienne Nitot trained under the jeweller to Marie Antoinette, and after the Revolution quickly gained favour with Napoleon Bonaparte, becoming his official jeweller in 1805. Numerous commissions followed including royal ceremonial jewels for the Emperor himself, gifts for Empress Joséphine, and later for his second wife Marie-Louise of Habsburg-Lorraine.

Today, Chaumet is the only jeweller still in existence on display in the Louvre, while many original order forms relating to the Emperor are of such historical significance that they’re housed at the National Archives in Paris.

Back at the Parisian flagship on Place Vendôme, I’m ushered upstairs through jaw-dropping 18th-century salons, one of which has walls lined with nickel silver maquettes of tiaras, perfect replicas of the adornments that would become a house signature.

Joseph Chaumet (who took over in 1889 and after whom the company is named) had the foresight to keep these beautiful prototypes, along with every document relating to jewellery creation and sale from 1780 when the company was first founded. In 1890 he decided to start taking photographs of every piece made, and created a laboratory in his home for this purpose, providing evidence of which pieces made it from sketch to reality. Amazingly, these photographic documents have survived; many other jewellery houses who did the same threw this evidence away when they ran out of space to keep it. (Read more.)