Tea at Trianon: Craftsmanship Can Save the World

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

Wednesday, March 24, 2021

Craftsmanship Can Save the World

From Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative:

“Right before me, in full view and in all its perfection, was that work of beauty, no, that miracle, the Cologne Cathedral. More than its intricate ornamentation, it was its spiritual depth that struck me, its towers and spires striving up to the heavens. I gasped, and stared with my mouth open…” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s description of the moment that he first set eyes on the Gothic splendor of Cologne Cathedral echoes the way that countless others have seen it across the centuries. It takes our breath away. It lifts up the heart and the mind to the heavens. Its spires inspire us, pointing us upwards towards higher things. It is, in this sense, a prayer, a praising of God in stone and form. An edifice that edifies.

And what is true of Cologne Cathedral is true of Chartres, or Saint Peter’s Basilica, or countless other churches and cathedrals with which Christendom has blessed us. When we see them we experience the kiss of beauty shining forth goodness and truth.

When we ponder the presence of such splendor, we should be moved to rejoice not only in the finished work of architecture but in the work of men’s hands which had made it possible. What skill and craftsmanship were necessary to bring forth such masterpieces of stone and glass!

Such thoughts come to mind when considering the radical vision of a new college in Charleston, South Carolina. The American College of the Building Arts (ACBA) is unlike any college that I know. Indeed it is the only school in the entire country offering a four-year degree in traditional craftsmanship. “Along with pens, paper, books, and computers, students here learn with trowels, chisels, hammers, and anvils,” writes Logan Ward in the current issue of Garden & Gun. “They shape timbers into soaring architectural statements, carve fireplace mantels from limestone, twist red-hot iron into filigreed gates.” (Read more.)