Tea at Trianon: Pearls and Cornflowers

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

Monday, August 14, 2023

Pearls and Cornflowers

The china pattern for the casual setting of Marie-Antoinette's refuge of Petit Trianon. From Le Boudoir de Marie-Antoinette:

In the summer of 1781, Queen Marie-Antoinette ordered a so-called “pearl and barbel” service from the Royal Manufacture in Sèvres. Some of his 295 initial pieces have been presented since mid-July at the Petit Trianon in Versailles. A very delicate decor. In the center, a bouquet of blueberries. On the edge, a scattering of these same blue flowers with pink hearts and green stems framed by two rows of white pearls on a green band underlined with golden lines. Since July 18, 2023, pieces of a lovely table service, which Queen Marie-Antoinette had ordered in 1781, for her own use, from the Royal Porcelain Factory of Sèvres, are presented in the small dining room of the Little Trianon. (Read more.)