What I did on my holidays (part 2).
On Wednesday, we finished off the plaster-cutting, but didn't have time for the gesso-engraving, so we were given a picture to copy and a slab of gesso to take home. Also both of the extremely heavy plaster slabs we'd worked on, so that we could take them home to gild. At four, we went to the Ecole Boulle. From the street side, this looks rather disappointingly like a run-down secondary school, but from the courtyard side it is a nice nineteenth century block, tiled with panels featuring the names of famous French furniture-makers (some of whom I'd even heard of). There are huge, well-equipped, well-lighted workshops, with what looks like plenty of equipment. The marquetry studio had some spectacular modern pieces, and plenty of clamps, which is a very sore point on our course. Some people (like me) have taken to bringing in their own clamps and hiding them. I was also impressed by their cavalier attitude to health and safety (especially the arrangement of shellac varnishes in the middle of a table like condiments), the appalling smell in the loos, and the youth and annoying coolness of the students. They take people directly from secondary school, and there are no mature students (or at least none as mature as I felt, although Dr Skippy claims to have studied there). The tour took a very long time, and we got caught up in the tail-end of the previous group's tour, so that we were able finally to talk with some of the first years. Eventually, we ended up having an excessively large, excessively late meal. Perhaps I am too old to be eating marrow-bones, carpaccio of beef and iles flottant in one evening. I certainly didn't sleep too well...
On Thursday, we set off far to early for Versailles, where we got a tour of the restoration workshops. These are housed in a series of high, light rooms around a huge cobbled courtyard opposite the palace. The head gilder showed us a number of chairs he was working on and gave us (as far as my French would allow me to tell) a very long disquisition on philosophical differences between English and French attitudes to restoration, then a man who was working on a lovely piano with a polished veneer case outside, and every inside surface covered with pictures of flowers, birds and insects on a gilt ground. It's a very early piano, with only four others like it in the world, and he'd been working on the piano for four years, and clearly very much in love with it, ending his talk by playing on it for some time. Lastly, we saw a spectacular mother-of-pearl veneered desk by Reisener that had belonged to Marie Antoinette, and had recently returned to France after having been sold abroad. It looks a bit rough now, but was (and will be again) all mother-of-pearl with silver and gilt fittings.
Then lunch and the palace. We only took the budget tour (state rooms only), since the workshops and had taken up most of the day, and I was surprised by how dusty everything looked. Perhaps I've been spoiled by Buckingham Palace, which is much shinier, or maybe I was just feeling particluarly grumpy. Half of the Hall of Mirrors is blocked off for restoration, so maybe I should go back again when it's finished. I'd love another look at the gardens, too. They were spectacular, even in their spring baldness, with no leaves on the trees and no flowers out yet. We spent a pleasant hour or so on the little train, getting off at intervals to look at the Trianons and to eat ice-cream. By the time we got back to the gilt-armchair bar by the hotel I was almost hallucinating with tiredness, and almost unable to finish my toasted cheese.
On Friday, we had a free day. Since I refused point blank to go to the Louvre (too huge) or Montparnasse (too hilly and touristy), I set off to find the gilding supplies shop that Philippe had told us about, and buy special gesso-cutting tools, apparently made from some insanely expensive metal only found on Mars. Then I made for the Musee Carnevalet, which covers the history of Paris and is a sort of cross between the V&A and the Museum of London, with a series of 17th and 18th century room interiors rescued when streets were cleared for Haussmann's boulevards, restored to what we are assured are original, amazingly bright, colours. Upstairs, they also have an Art Nouveau jeweller's shop designed by Alphonse Mucha and covered with bronze peacocks, and a spectacular 1920s ballroom painted all over, walls and roof, with a mad chinoiserie version of the Entry of the Queen of Sheba, painted in grey and red on a white-gold ground. Unfortunately, my camera batteries had died by this point, but here is the museum's website.. Then lunch and being-sneered-at by an insanely well-groomed couple with a tiny dog, and on to the Viaduc des Arts. Since the shops were open this time, we managed to spend a bit on incense, had a good nose around the shop that made objects in gilded leathers and one of the picture restorers, and even a few minutes on the Promenade Plantee. There are some nice pictures of that here on the site of a group who what to establish something similar in Chicago. These seem to have been taken in summer - I was told the roses are lovely then, but they'd only been pruned last week.
On Saturday, Mona and I went out for more shopping, while Lauren went back to the Louvre. This time, we found the other gilding supplies shop, around the corner from the one we were at yesterday (and here had they strenuously denied the existence of any other gilding shop in the area). This is a tiny shop with an uneven wood floor, shelves of interesting jars and bunches of fascinating things hung from the ceiling. It all had a very Potterish air. The shopfront was backed by a huge warehouse, from which and had one of those little glass booths, in which he made up the bills. I took a catalogue, which lists a spectacular range of stuff, including dragonsblood, but mysteriously gives no prices for anything. Neither does their website. I bought some extra-special gilding base (assiette superieure) and little brushes for cleaning things, while Mona went mad and bought practically one of everything, plus a terrific book (in French, alas) all about gilding. We lugged all this through the market at Place d'Aligre. I can never get over how much nicer French market fruit and veg look than English ones. Obviously, the Spanish save up their rubbish strawberries to sell to us, as the ones there were larger, shinier, and more strawberry-flavoured than I've seen here. I restrained myself from buying a huge bundle of white asparagus, but went mad when we got to the covered market, buying a delicious little flat cake made of chestnuts (I think), myrtle jam, a whole foie gras about a yard of sausage and a bunch of other stuff. Then we dumped this all at the hotel and set back out for Monoprix, where I loaded up on chocolate bunnies, jars of pate and exotic biscuits (pear jaffa cakes?), had a cheese-free Vietnamese lunch, and headed for the station.
On Sunday, I slept mostly.
On Thursday, we set off far to early for Versailles, where we got a tour of the restoration workshops. These are housed in a series of high, light rooms around a huge cobbled courtyard opposite the palace. The head gilder showed us a number of chairs he was working on and gave us (as far as my French would allow me to tell) a very long disquisition on philosophical differences between English and French attitudes to restoration, then a man who was working on a lovely piano with a polished veneer case outside, and every inside surface covered with pictures of flowers, birds and insects on a gilt ground. It's a very early piano, with only four others like it in the world, and he'd been working on the piano for four years, and clearly very much in love with it, ending his talk by playing on it for some time. Lastly, we saw a spectacular mother-of-pearl veneered desk by Reisener that had belonged to Marie Antoinette, and had recently returned to France after having been sold abroad. It looks a bit rough now, but was (and will be again) all mother-of-pearl with silver and gilt fittings.
Then lunch and the palace. We only took the budget tour (state rooms only), since the workshops and had taken up most of the day, and I was surprised by how dusty everything looked. Perhaps I've been spoiled by Buckingham Palace, which is much shinier, or maybe I was just feeling particluarly grumpy. Half of the Hall of Mirrors is blocked off for restoration, so maybe I should go back again when it's finished. I'd love another look at the gardens, too. They were spectacular, even in their spring baldness, with no leaves on the trees and no flowers out yet. We spent a pleasant hour or so on the little train, getting off at intervals to look at the Trianons and to eat ice-cream. By the time we got back to the gilt-armchair bar by the hotel I was almost hallucinating with tiredness, and almost unable to finish my toasted cheese.
On Friday, we had a free day. Since I refused point blank to go to the Louvre (too huge) or Montparnasse (too hilly and touristy), I set off to find the gilding supplies shop that Philippe had told us about, and buy special gesso-cutting tools, apparently made from some insanely expensive metal only found on Mars. Then I made for the Musee Carnevalet, which covers the history of Paris and is a sort of cross between the V&A and the Museum of London, with a series of 17th and 18th century room interiors rescued when streets were cleared for Haussmann's boulevards, restored to what we are assured are original, amazingly bright, colours. Upstairs, they also have an Art Nouveau jeweller's shop designed by Alphonse Mucha and covered with bronze peacocks, and a spectacular 1920s ballroom painted all over, walls and roof, with a mad chinoiserie version of the Entry of the Queen of Sheba, painted in grey and red on a white-gold ground. Unfortunately, my camera batteries had died by this point, but here is the museum's website.. Then lunch and being-sneered-at by an insanely well-groomed couple with a tiny dog, and on to the Viaduc des Arts. Since the shops were open this time, we managed to spend a bit on incense, had a good nose around the shop that made objects in gilded leathers and one of the picture restorers, and even a few minutes on the Promenade Plantee. There are some nice pictures of that here on the site of a group who what to establish something similar in Chicago. These seem to have been taken in summer - I was told the roses are lovely then, but they'd only been pruned last week.
On Saturday, Mona and I went out for more shopping, while Lauren went back to the Louvre. This time, we found the other gilding supplies shop, around the corner from the one we were at yesterday (and here had they strenuously denied the existence of any other gilding shop in the area). This is a tiny shop with an uneven wood floor, shelves of interesting jars and bunches of fascinating things hung from the ceiling. It all had a very Potterish air. The shopfront was backed by a huge warehouse, from which and had one of those little glass booths, in which he made up the bills. I took a catalogue, which lists a spectacular range of stuff, including dragonsblood, but mysteriously gives no prices for anything. Neither does their website. I bought some extra-special gilding base (assiette superieure) and little brushes for cleaning things, while Mona went mad and bought practically one of everything, plus a terrific book (in French, alas) all about gilding. We lugged all this through the market at Place d'Aligre. I can never get over how much nicer French market fruit and veg look than English ones. Obviously, the Spanish save up their rubbish strawberries to sell to us, as the ones there were larger, shinier, and more strawberry-flavoured than I've seen here. I restrained myself from buying a huge bundle of white asparagus, but went mad when we got to the covered market, buying a delicious little flat cake made of chestnuts (I think), myrtle jam, a whole foie gras about a yard of sausage and a bunch of other stuff. Then we dumped this all at the hotel and set back out for Monoprix, where I loaded up on chocolate bunnies, jars of pate and exotic biscuits (pear jaffa cakes?), had a cheese-free Vietnamese lunch, and headed for the station.
On Sunday, I slept mostly.