My name’s Carolyn Sargentson. I’m a senior research fellow at the V&A and I’m sitting in the conservation studios of the Museum, with the music stand that has a porcelain plaque on the top.

The plaque is the key to a really interesting problem that comes up with this table. We had an inscription on a label that claimed that it was given by Marie-Antoinette to the mother of the woman who owned it in the 1860s. Now lots of people claim that their mothers have been given things by Marie-Antoinette. But if we look really closely at the porcelain plaque, we can start to put together a story that makes it very plausible indeed that Marie-Antoinette did own the table, and did give it to an English woman as a gift.

So the key to all of this is the libretto that has been painted incredibly delicately by the painter at Sèvres, the manufacture royale of porcelain. The libretto comes from an opera, and the libretto has a number of lines, alongside its music, that represent a moment in a story when a blind man had his sight restored to him. And the first line of it reads ‘la lumière la plus pure brille’;

MUSIC: Zulmis

‘the most brilliant of lights is burning or shining’

MUSIC: Zulmis

And the reason that the story has arrived at this point, is that a man called Zulmis meets his lover Nadine, and having permission from their parents to become close, very, very much falls in love with her and wants to marry her.

The opéra comique, it’s set to music and it’s an Italian form of comedic opera. We might say it’s something like a rom-com set to music, that these stories are all terribly romantic and have endings just like this one. I think what probably happened is that after Marie-Antoinette had seen the play, this very specific plaque was painted with this particular set of verses.

Now Eleanor Eden, the mother of the woman who wrote the ticket inside, was the wife of William Eden, who was in Paris in 1786 to negotiate the most important commercial treaty of this period between France and England. In 1787 a magnificent service of Sèvres porcelain with 60 plates and all kinds of other paraphernalia was given by Louis XVI to William Eden for Madame Eden.

So this porcelain plaque and this little music table here, seems to be part of a whole set of gifts that were made to honour the role that William Eden and his wife had played in negotiating this really important treaty.

At around the same time as this piano was made in Madrid, Beethoven wrote his eleventh piano sonata. Beethoven’s piece heralds a move away from the sonatas of Haydn and Mozart towards greater experimentation with form, expression and the dynamic possibilities offered by this new instrument. The sonata was previously a musical form performed by aristocratic amateurs in salons. But as it evolved in to an increasingly technically-difficult form, it was more easily tackled by professional performers. Here, the opening movement of the sonata is performed by Zvi Meniker on a period instrument.

‘Sonata no. 11 in B flat, op. 22: Allegro con brio’ by Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827)
Played by Zvi Meniker. From the album: ‘Beethoven: The Complete Piano Sonatas on Period Instruments’, Claves Records, 1997

Duration 8.23

Hello, I’m Elizabeth Hamilton and I’m a volunteer guide at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Here’s a gingerbread mould.

By the late 18th century fashionable goods were reaching most corners of Europe. Comfort was a priority and families accumulated objects specific to recreation and relaxation in the home. The dominant style was Neoclassicism, inspired by archaeological discoveries of ancient Greece and Rome. However centuries-old local traditions and styles still prevailed in the production of many domestic objects, as we find here.

Culinary objects demonstrate the delight in having decorated foodstuffs on the dining table. This German mould of carved and incised pearwood would have been used to stamp gingerbread before baking. You’re welcome to touch it.

This example of folk art is oval in shape, and central to the design is a lamb standing in profile facing to the left. The curly fleece is well depicted, as is the long tail. The front right hoof is raised and seems to hold the staff of a flag to be seen to the right of the lamb’s head. Decorative flowers on a stem frame the lamb and the outer edge of the mould has a continuous leaf pattern. The date 1795 is incised beneath the lamb’s head. It reads correctly on the mould but would of course print in reverse. We don’t know the reason for this – perhaps it is simply a mistake.

The Lamb of God or Agnus Dei was a popular Christian motif, even in this culinary context, to remind one of Christ’s role as the sacrificial lamb, but also as the Saviour with the flag representing Christ triumphant.

I’m Dawn Hoskin. I’m the assistant curator working on the Europe 1600–1800 galleries. We’re in the textile conservation studios, where a French, lovely chocolate-brown wool suit has been laid out for us to look at.

Suits like this would have been kind of staple daywear for the middle and upper classes in Europe in the late 18th century. This particular one does really exemplify the fashions of the 1780s in France. This is the period where something called ‘Anglomania’ was taking over French fashionable culture. So this was from clothes fashions to things like having English butlers, English breeds of dogs or horses, and also taking up pastimes or sports like horse racing.

The colours were becoming darker and a bit more sombre, but these darker colours really depend on accessories such as the buttons here to really give a maximum sartorial impact.

There are some really funny, satirical prints in the 1770s that start to make fun of this fashion, as they see these buttons getting ever more shiny and detailed, or buttons getting larger and larger. And there’s one I really like which is called the Coup de Bouton. It’s a 1777 print and there’s this fashionable young gentleman going to meet his lady friend and she falls back because she’s so blinded by all the light catching on these buttons.

In addition to the buttons, one of my favourite aspects of this whole suit is, in fact, something that’s relatively small and tucked away on the back of the coat. Attached just below the collar you find this small, black, silk satin drawstring bag, which is in fact a wig bag, that would be used to hold the ends of the wearer’s wig, or at this time when people were starting to move away from wearing wigs, perhaps the owner’s own hair. And this was probably to prevent, kind of, any products that are on particularly the wig, perhaps the hair, from soiling around the neck of the coat there.

My name is Wesley Kerr, and I’m a historian, broadcaster, horticulturalist.

Simon-Louis Boizot’s wonderful piece of biscuit porcelain, it’s called, because it’s unglazed. And it was done at the very remarkable Sèvres factory just outside Paris in 1794, and in a way it’s a sort of piece of agitprop. This is produced in revolutionary France when the revolution is five years into its unravelling and in its most radical phase. The king had been executed the year before and the radicals, you know the Jacobins, took the astonishing step for 18th-century Europe of freeing the slaves, because, of course, so much of the prosperity of France and much of Western Europe was built on these slave colonies.

So what’s the connection of slaves with this marvellous piece of Sèvres porcelain? La nature is nature, and it’s really Mother Nature, I think, would be a good translation. A Mother Nature who seems to have six breasts, is suckling two children, she’s suckling a very sweet white baby on the top right breast and she’s suckling a very sweet bare-bottomed black baby on the left breast. And this is a very, very powerful expression by, as it were, the artistic arbiters of the time in the Sèvres factory, and the French state in this revolutionary moment saying, ‘yes there is equality’. The black child is of equal status to the white child.

And I think in terms of the iconography that it’s using, it is the iconography of classical mythology that is very important, because remember these Jacobins had invented an entirely new religion. They almost went back to ancient classical gods created by the state. So, as well as looking a bit like Diana, who’s often portrayed multi-breasted, she looks a bit like Marianne, who is the revolutionary symbol of liberty, although not normally with suckling children. But there’s also shades of the Virgin Mary there. So there is so much going on, it’s amazing that this has survived and we’re so lucky to be able to see it.

Henriette-Lucy Dillon was born in 18th-century Paris to an Irish Jacobite family. Apprentice lady-in-waiting to Marie-Antoinette, she married the Marquis de La Tour du Pin, an army officer and diplomat. Her memoirs give a first-hand account of the upheavals in France from the ancien régime, through the Revolution, Napoleon’s empire and the subsequent restoration of the monarchy. This extract describes 5th October 1789, when a crowd of women marched on Versailles. The following morning the crowd would invade the palace, demand the appearance of the king, and take the royal family back to Paris. Versailles would never again be the residence of kings.

‘On the 4th of October, many of the Paris bakeries had no bread and there was a great commotion. But at Versailles no one was alarmed. The riot seemed similar to others that had already taken place, and everyone believed that the National Guard would be able to control the people. Several messages sent to the King and to the President of the Chamber were so reassuring that on the 5th of October, at ten o'clock in the morning, the King went out hunting, while after lunch I went to meet Mme de Valence. We saw a man ride past us at full gallop. It was the Duc de Maillé, who cried out to us: "Paris is marching here with cannons!" We were greatly alarmed and returned immediately to Versailles, where the alarm had already been raised.
…
Meanwhile, the drums beat to summon the National Guard at Versailles. They assembled on the Place d'Armes and arranged themselves in battle formation. The Flanders Regiment positioned itself between the Royal Stables and the gate. All the entrances to the Château were barricaded, and doors, which had not turned on their hinges since the days of Louis XIV, were closed for the first time.
…
Finally, at about three o'clock, the King and his entourage arrived at a gallop up the Grande Avenue. This unfortunate Prince, instead of stopping to say a few kind words to this fine Flanders Regiment, which was crying out "Vive le Roi!" as he passed, said not a word. He shut himself up in his apartments and did not re-emerge. The National Guard of Versailles, which was getting its first taste of war, began to grumble and say that it would not fire on the people of Paris.’

Extract from ‘Recollections of the Revolution and the Empire, Journal d’une femme de cinquante ans’ by Madame de la Tour du Pin