Tea at Trianon: A New York Apartment

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

Sunday, December 9, 2018

A New York Apartment

From Architectural Digest:

Ask any New York interiors insider to define the city’s style, and the answer is likely to vacillate somewhere between uptown elegance and downtown cool. But in one Gramercy Park townhouse apartment, Neal Beckstedt managed to blend the best of both worlds, uniting competing elements with an aesthetic that could best be described as Manhattan by way of Paris. “There’s an eclecticism about French design that is so attractive,” the designer says, noting the home’s varied influences and Gallic-feeling bones. “We wanted to convey this sense of internationalism while keeping the design rooted in New York.”

It helps that his clients were a young French couple with impeccable taste. “They’re very cultured and worldly and beyond chic, so the apartment is a reflection of them,” Beckstedt says. Riffing on their fashion-forward cues, he transformed the fourth-level space, refinishing the original parquet flooring, adding molding—“Wall paneling was a recurring theme,” he says—and heightening thresholds at the entrances of each room to impart an airy atmosphere of grandness. Furnishings and décor also hew to the concept, from the Empire-style chandelier that hangs above the dining table to the billowing tasseled drapery in the living room to the embroidered Louis XVI fauteuils in the library. In the newly configured master bedroom, a gilded trifold mirror with faux-mullioned panes conceals the new marble bath and De Gournay–covered study while oozing Old World charm—a look that continues in the adjoining solarium, where vintage fabrics that the couple found on a trip to Morocco appear on the throw pillows. “I consider myself a modernist, but I love craftsmanship, whether it’s from the 16th century or from today,” Beckstedt says. (Read more.)