Tea at Trianon: An American Couple’s Paris Pied-à-Terre

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

Saturday, October 24, 2020

An American Couple’s Paris Pied-à-Terre

From Architectural Digest:

For this San Francisco–based couple, a place in Paris was always a dream. It all began with a year the wife spent abroad during college, when she met her current husband. Fast-forward to today, and walking into this light-filled, top-floor apartment is breathtaking. With stunning views of both the Invalides and the Eiffel Tower, this gracious space immediately brings to mind the refrain “location, location, location.”
Before embarking on the search, the clients had enlisted their architect, Sandrine Teze-Limal, to help them. (The clients met Teze-Limal while they were in graduate school.) It didn't take them long. The couple knew they had found their perfect getaway after opening the door to this fifth-floor space in the middle of the elegant 7th arrondissement. It had great bones in a historic building that had been owned by the same person for the past 50 years. Soon thereafter, the couple called on designer Benjamin Wood to help them with the interiors. The clients had met him over 20 years ago in Sun Valley, Idaho, where they were neighbors. (Read more.)