Tea at Trianon: Painted Floors

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, April 1, 2022

Painted Floors

From Architectural Digest:

A painted floor might seem old-fashioned, but designers are revisiting the throwback decorating move, which is both economical (just paint over what’s already there) and totally transformative to a space. In a London flat for two 20-somethings, AD100 interior designer Beata Heuman brightened things up by coating dark wood floors in an electrifying raspberry hue, which, as her senior designer Caroline Barker explained, “sounds like a really bold choice but actually ties everything together and feels quite calming.”
Meanwhile, Will Cooper of the AD100 firm ASH NYC is fond of covering floors with white epoxy paint, as he did in a family home in Tribeca and his own petite Manhattan pad. And who can forget the emerald green and sunflower yellow floors in Brock Forsblom’s minimalist color-blocked New York apartment, which ran in New York magazine? AD100 designers Rodman Primack and Rudy Weissenberg used a similar jewel-toned green on the floors of their Mexico City home. (Read more.)