Once upon a time, before tourists waited in line for hours for hot chocolate at Angelina, before Chanel occupied Rue Cambon and the Ritz, before Van Cleef & Arpels sparkled at Place Vendôme, Saint-Honoré became the quarter of choice for Paris’s 18th-century aristocrats and luxury artisans. This neighborhood is as storied as its eponymous street is expansive. At over one mile wide, it is so densely punctuated by the monuments, houses, and collections that give Paris its alluring gravity that simply to queue up for chocolat chaud is to be immersed in its legacy.
History and an elemental notion of immersion animate the Musée des Arts Décoratifs’ newly opened exhibition. “A Day in the Eighteenth Century: Chronicle of a Parisian Townhouse” unfolds like a play, but with a set containing more than 550 decorative art objects as props—furniture, wood paneling, textiles, ceramics, jewelry, clothing, accessories, and toys—and lighting cues to signal the passage of time. Period rooms abound in Paris, but this experience is built upon scenographic suggestions of space—bedchamber, library, boudoir, chapel, dining room, salon—and moments throughout a single day in the mid-1700s.
