Tea at Trianon: Retro Landscaping Trends That Are Making a Comeback

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, June 1, 2022

Retro Landscaping Trends That Are Making a Comeback

From Apartment Therapy:

It’s easy to pinpoint the most iconic mid-century architectural and decor elements (think: wide-low, mass-produced homes, thanks to an economic boom and housing shortage post-WWII), but what about landscaping trends from the ’50s through the ’70s?
Turns out, in this time period, architecture and landscape started to overlap more, landscaping historian Therese O’Malley says. “Indoor-outdoor space … really is underlying design at this point,” she says.
Rachel Carson’s 1962 book “Silent Spring” “had an enormous impact on not only scientific but popular and political thinking about the environment,” O’Malley says, and there was an overall sense of increased botanical awareness.
A piqued interest in gardening and botanicals led to its incorporation into home design and neighborhood design. For instance, Landscape architect Ian McHarg’s 1969 book “Designing with Nature” described exactly that — using nature as a guiding design force.
This era also saw an emphasis on not only “the forces of nature in a place, but the forces of culture in the place,” O’Malley says. The work of architect Lawrence Halprin, for instance, was community-centric, and landscape architect Dan Kiley started the concept of the rooftop garden in the 1960s, which is “very, very common” in cities today, O’Malley says. (Read more.)