Christening pillow

The dress has a decided Chinoiserie design, including palm trees, and a curious large oval lozenge pattern in parts of the ground. In 1979 I visited Anne Kraatz in Paris. She had been hired by the Musée des Arts Décoratifs at the Louvre to catalog their lace collection, and kindly showed me a number of the pieces in storage. In particular, she showed me a piece about a foot square, maybe larger (it's hard to remember exactly), which had a palm leaf design and a number of large oval lozenges in the ground... she wondered if I had ever seen anything like it. I immediately told her that I thought it looked like something from Empress Maria Theresa's dress (she then asked me 'which Maria Theresa'... we weren't communicating too well, I think). The possible fate of the dress, including a photo of what might have been the piece I saw is in the Paulis book (see below). I remembered that Paulis had written on the subject, but we could not find a copy of the book at the time of my visit. I do remember how delicate and fine the piece was - not something you would expect from such a large original piece. Comparable furniture flounces of the period tend to be a bit sturdier. It was a pieced bobbinlace much like what I have listed under the "Brussels with Brides" section on my web site. I did not see any sign of needlelace motifs.

The photo I show below is taken from Moritz Dreger, and Paulis shows only a part of this piece in her article. I've photoshopped the life out of this, and it looks considerably better than it does in the original Dreger photo. It does seem like it might be baby-layette size. Too bad the pattern is so off-center.

Marie Antoinette shawl.

first posted 3/20/2009