Just as China has their Strategic Pork Reserve, France has their Strategic Furniture Reserve. It is rumored to contain millions of pieces beyond the official count but no one has actually seen the inventory sheets, kept under lock and key in the Bastille.
From The Telegraph:
France is to sell off part of its notoriously large collection of antique furniture to raise extra funds for its hospitals, which have borne the brunt of the coronavirus epidemic.....MUCH MORE
According to French media reports, around 100 objects dating from the 19th century, notably from the reign of Louis-Philippe I between 1830 and 1848, are to be sold to “contribute to the national effort to support hospitals”.
Proceeds of the auction, which will take place on France’s heritage days on the weekend of 20-21 September. will go to the Foundation for Paris Hospitals and French Hospitals, whose president is First Lady Brigitte Macron.
Hervé Lemoine, the director of the Mobilier National, told Le Figaro that curators were drawing up a list of items not deemed of huge heritage value and that there was no intention of “selling off the family silver”.
The Mobilier National is tasked with furnishing state buildings including the Élysée Palace.
Containing more than 130,000 items from chandeliers to tapestries it publicly itemised 78,000 of them last year following vitriolic criticism by the state auditor of its “mismanagement” of the collection. Dating back to Louis XIV, the “furniture warehouse of the nation”, as it is known, was “on its last legs”, warned the Cours des Comptes.
Last year, its inspectors found large quantities of alcohol in Mobilier National’s workshop and said staff only worked a third of the year and used tools and equipment to “moonlight” on their own projects. Management hit back at the claims as “grotesque”....
I suppose we can let the Rothschild banker keep the desk if he really, really wants it.
I like the office though.
Credit: The Economist
