Neck knots

Image Adam chemiser 1933

New post at St Tyl on beautiful neckwear for men, click

Mark my hours

photo le style et le matière

photo le style et le matière
sun dial at Anet

cuncta regit dum pareat uni

He commands all but obeys only one

The sun dial that is,

obeys only the sun...

Hope your weekend will be sunnier than ours!

New post at St Tyl Textiles from the Domaine de Mme Elisabeth at Versailles, click

Color by Monet

photo Le style et la matière

At Giverny, Monet's house and gardens.

The text is below...

photo Le style et la matière

photo Le style et la matière

photo Le style et la matière

photo Le style et la matière

photo Le style et la matière

photo Le style et la matière

photo Le style et la matière

"La couleur est mon obsession quotidienne, ma joie et mon tourment."

Color is my daily obsession, my joy and torment.

When the undertaker draped Monet’s coffin with a black shroud in sign of mourning, statesman ,Georges Clemenceau, intervened saying,

 Pas de noir pour Monet, le noir n’est pas une couleur !

Not black for Monet, black is not a color !

He then went to the window, unfastened the old flowered chintz curtain with colors of perwinkles, forget-me-nots, and hydrangeas

to spread it instead over the coffin of his close friend.

(as related by Alexandre Duval-Stalla in Claude Monet, Georges Clemenceau: Une histoire, deux caractères)

More on fabrics at St Tyl: The other side of fabrics: brocade vs. lampas

For the curious

photo Gésbi/Le style et la matière

The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious - 

the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science.

Albert. Einstein

Last weekend I visited the cathedral and museum of Sens. The museum holds many items of great artistry and beauty - and  this case of curiosties. An assortment très comme-il-faut of its kind:
a mutant lamb, an ostrich egg, an elaborate embroidery, 2 still born skeletons, an intricate lock, coral, coco fesses (sea coconut has a more colorful name in French = fanny coconut), a tribal headress,
birds of many colors -
in short, wonders of man and nature.

I'd saved the above quote sometime back.
I thought I'd place it  here, even if a cabinet de curiosités has a trophy case side
and our gaze on it somewhat voyeuristic.
What we find mysterious may differ through time, but it's a needed emotion.
Even when things get a little weird.


New post at St Tyl: Wooly Desks

Basilique St Denis with Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite

photo: Gésbi: Le style et la matière

The location of the Basilique St Denis to the north of Paris is not the most inviting place. I hadn't been since my first year in France so long ago!

But, once in the door, the guide was fascinating and the artifacts are rich, so there was much to appreciate despite the creeping cold through my not-so-thin soles in this lovely month of March. 

photo: Gésbi: Le style et la matière

To see the royal sepulchers, it is the place to go.

photo: Gésbi: Le style et la matière

Was it just that day, or is it a place more solemn than sacred? Even that feeling was reduced by sassy little putti who preened and taunted. Oh, the vanity of men - and when those men are kings and queens -

photo: Gésbi: Le style et la matière

- very earthly all the same.

photo: Gésbi: Le style et la matière

A replica of the faudesteuil Dagobert is under the crucifix. (I've written about it before here.) What is this throne, ancestor of the fauteuil and kin to the Roman curule doing here behind the altar?
Dagobert reigned for ten years from 603-639.  He was the first king buried in the basilica and is considered the founder of the St Denis Abbey. In th 13th century, before Saint Louis ordered the first 16 recombant figures to inaugurate the royal necropolis, a colorful tomb of exceptional dimensions was already concecrated to Dagobert. The original throne was part of the cathedral's treasure and is today in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Napoleon was seated on it for the distribution of the very first legions d'honneur.

photo: Gésbi: Le style et la matière

Then, behold, a message :

photo: Gésbi: Le style et la matière

For anyone who exerces his capacity to reflect, the appearances of beauty become representations 

of an invisible harmony.

Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite

photo: Gésbi: Le style et la matière

Patterns.

photo: Gésbi: Le style et la matière

Amen.

For some closer looks at the statuary in a previous post and further links, click!

Magical Rateau

The collection of the Duchess of Alba by the legendary Armand Albert Rateau will be auctioned at Christie's Paris in the month of May. These interiors, so fanciful and yet so ordered have an other worldly quality and even more so in period pictures.

“The House of Alba has decided to sell the Armand Albert Rateau furniture commissioned by the 17th Duke of Alba, don Jacobo Fitz-James Stuart in the early 1920s in France, in order to support the funding of its heritage and of its various palaces throughout Spain as well as supporting new projects for the family.... These pieces of furniture are all that remain of a larger ensemble that no longer exists. They do not form part of the historic collection of the House of Alba nor do they relate to the history of Spain”, stated the House of Alba.

© Christie's Images LTD, 2013

The palace of Alba project is in the same spirit as his work for Jeanne Lanvin and dates to the same period. "Armand Albert Rateau’s bronzes are creations of infinite poetry and of exceptional quality and subtlety. They relate to the hedonist world born from the designer’s imagination and nourished by his first journey to Naples and Pompeï in 1914, accompanied by a group of friends which included the jewelry designer Cartier and with whom he visited the sites revealed by archeological excavations at the end of the 18th century. During this trip he discovered the bronze furniture on show at the Naples Museum, as well as the wholly fantastic universe created by the decorative frescoes which covered the houses at Pompeï. "

image: Drouot

The above lacquer panel is from the Pavillon de l'élégances at the 1925 Exposition des Arts Decoratifs.

Though the contents of the rooms decorated by Rateau for the Duchess of Alba never traveled outside the palace, the designer did create a reconstruction of the commission which was exhibited in Paris and New York, showing the importance he gave to the work. The panels are not included in the sale. You'll have to hire someone to help you if you want the marble tub and bronze and gilt wood furnishings to have a backdrop.

quotes and images and further information: Christie's

Please continue to St Tyl to see exquisite fabrics by jewelry and furnishing designer, 

Jean Boggio, click! 

The nose knows

image from the Mae West room from the Dali exhibit Centre Georges Pompidiou 

 source monquotidien

L'instinct, c'est le nez de l'esprit.

Instinct is the nose of the mind.

Madame de Girardin

image Wikimedia Commons

Délphine Gay de Girardin

1804-1855