MARIE ANTOINETTE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 May 1938, Page 4

MARIE ANTOINETTE

OLD CURTAINS REPRODUCED. The exquisite little drawing room in the private apartments of Queen Marie Antoinette at Versailles, where with her friends she could escape from the gilded halls and at times wearying ceremony and etiquette of court life, has just been provided with new curtains of a pattern which the ill-fated Queen had herself chosen. Until recently, the curtains were red, and had been put there at a later, less well-inspired period. By a chance discovery of a faded piece of material lying on an old mantelpiece in the reserves, M. Maurch-ean-Beaupre, curator of the museum, was able to refurnish the drawingroom of Marie Antoinette with the curtains she had chosen for it. A part of the remnant was sent to Lyons to be examined by experts of the famous silk museum of that city, but it could not be matched in their collection. They reported, however, that there was one firm of weavers in Lyons which could reproduce it, a firm which has existed for more than three hundred years and still possesses many of its ancient looms. It was on a loom of the eighteenth century that the new curtains were woven by expert workers who do nothing but reproduce ancient materials. The curtains are of a pale golden yellow, with a wide, embroidered edge, and they .hang above a sofa where Marie Antoinette was fond of sitting while talking with her most intimate friends. It was here in this drawing room, with its finely carved woodwork wainscoting, that the Queen used to take her music and singing lessons, and where Madame Vigee-Lebrun painted her portrait.

After the Revolution, the apartment was emptied of its furniture, but gradually through the years it has been restored, until today, thanks to the discovery of M. Maurchean-Beau-pre, this beautiful apartment is once again as it was in her day when in hours of happiness she chose its pret-