Tea at Trianon: The Paris Pied-à-Terre of Laura Sartori Rimini

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

Friday, October 23, 2020

The Paris Pied-à-Terre of Laura Sartori Rimini

From a couple years ago but still enchanting. From Café Design:

Regarding this particular home, Laura Sartori Rimini had been dreaming for years about a house of her own. Not a family home, she already shares a Milan apartment with her husband and two children, but a home by the sea where she could decorate without constraints and compromise. After a Paris vacation, she changed her mind and instead of a beach house, her eyes were set on a small Parisian apartment in one of the medieval buildings in the Latin Quarter.

“I love the French style. Look at Parisian women – they are so elegant! And then there is a lot of entertainment all year round – exhibitions, concerts, opera, ”says Rimini. “I wanted to make the interiors look as if they had come down from the pages of a Balzac novel,” she says. “Only in miniature, because the area of this apartment is only 60- square meters”. That is a little over 650 – square feet. What she has accomplished with the interiors is nothing short of a miracle. You feel enveloped and transported into a different era, a time of romance and beauty and enchantment. I think her mentor would certainly approve. Enjoy! (Read more.)