Turnbull & Asser :130 Years - By Royal Appointment

https://turnbullandasser.co.uk/

Turnbull & Asser is a British shirt-maker that was established in 1885. The company has its flagship store on Jermyn Street in the St James's area of London, and its bespoke store around the corner on Bury Street. Turnbull & Asser also has a location at 4 Davies Street in Mayfair. In addition to the three London stores, the company has a shop in New York City.

 

History

The business was founded in 1885 by John Arthur Turnbull, a hosier and shirt-maker, at 3 Church Place, St James's. Turnbull met Ernest Asser, a salesman, later on in 1893. Together, they opened a hosiery under the name "John Arthur Turnbull" in St James's located in England. As the neighborhood was the site of numerous gentlemen's clubs and high-end haberdashers, the business flourished. The name was changed to "Turnbull & Asser" in 1895.

 

In 1903, after continued success, Turnbull & Asser moved to its present location at the corner of Jermyn Street and Bury Street. In 1915, during World War I, Turnbull & Asser developed a raincoat which doubled as a sleeping bag for the British military. It is known as the Oilsilk Combination Coverall & Ground Sheet.

 

Between the 1920s and the 1970s, Turnbull & Asser grew its London business from a haberdashery to a clothier, expanding into sportswear, clothing (both bespoke and ready-to-wear), and ready-to-wear shirts. As its symbol, it used a hunting horn with a "Q" above, which it called the Quorn, a name it shares with one of the oldest hunts in England. Many of Turnbull & Asser's articles were called by this name, such as the popular "Quorn scarf".

 

During the 1960s, Turnbull & Asser was known for catering to the Swinging London set, with vibrant colors and modern designs. In 1962, Turnbull & Asser began to outfit the cinematic James Bond as first portrayed by Sean Connery, whose dress shirts had turnback cuffs fastened with buttons as opposed to cufflinks, referred to as "cocktail cuffs" or "James Bond cuffs".

 

In the 1970s and 1980s, Turnbull & Asser began reviving some of the more traditional aspects of its business. The company found that Americans increasingly were buying its wares, so it began offering trunk shows at the Grand Hyatt in New York City. Beginning in 1974, Turnbull & Asser sold ready-to-wear shirts in the United States through department stores Bonwit Teller and Neiman Marcus. For a brief period beginning in 1979, Turnbull & Asser even operated a small store in Toronto. Turnbull & Asser also opened a location in Beverly Hills in 2003 before closing several years later.

 

In February 2018, Turnbull & Asser posted a £1.2 Million pound loss, leading to a £1m equity injection from its owner, Ali Fayed.

 

Royal Warrant

Charles III has bought shirts from Turnbull & Asser since his youth. When, in 1980, the then Prince of Wales was granted the power of bestowing royal warrants, his first issue was granted to Turnbull & Asser. He also wears Turnbull & Asser suits, made by the former Chester Barrie factory in Crewe, Cheshire. Following the retirement of Paul Cuss, the Royal Warrant was passed down to Steven Quin, who currently heads the bespoke department in Bury Street.

 

Today

Shirts and ties are still made in its Gloucester factory.

 

In addition to its retail stores, the company hosts seasonal bespoke shirt trunkshows in key cities around the world, including Los Angeles, Chicago, Toronto, Mumbai, Seoul, Tokyo, Singapore, Hong Kong and more.

 

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Turnbull & Asser dedicated its Gloucester workroom to making medical-grade uniforms for National Health Service personnel.

 

BUSINESS

Profits slip slightly at Royal shirt-maker Turnbull & Asser

Turnbull & Asser has made shirts for members of royalty, world leaders, entertainers and captains of industry

By Joanna Bourke

28 November 2018

https://www.standard.co.uk/business/profits-slip-slightly-at-royal-shirtmaker-turnbull-asser-a4002706.html

 

Shirt-maker Turnbull & Asser might count Prince Charles as a client but even royal patronage can’t protect it from High Street woes.

 

The St James’s firm, founded in 1885, on Wednesday admitted that “the general trading environment was tough last year and continues to be so”.

 

The business — owned by Ali Fayed (younger brother of former Harrods boss Mohamed Al-Fayed) and his sons — posted a £1.2 million loss for the year to February 3, compared with a £1.1 million loss a year before.

Prince turns tailor during factory visit

BBC Two Trailer: Agatha Christie Lucy Worsley on the Mystery Queen / Agatha Christie by Lucy Worsley review – in search of the elusive author

Review

Agatha Christie by Lucy Worsley review – in search of the elusive author

 

The historian shines a light on the modernity of Christie’s crime fiction and debunks the myths surrounding her disappearance

 

Alex Clark

Wed 31 Aug 2022 09.00 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/aug/31/agatha-christie-by-lucy-worsley-review-in-search-of-the-elusive-author

 

If Agatha Christie remains elusive, it’s not for the want of those trying to find her. Janet Morgan’s official biography of 1984 and Laura Thompson’s equally detailed but ultimately more impressionistic portrait of 2007 have both been updated and reissued; and there are numerous other analyses that try to understand how the woman who routinely described herself as a housewife became Britain’s bestselling novelist of all time. Enter historian Lucy Worsley, whose declared intention is to rescue Christie, who died in 1976 at the age of 85, from the misperceptions that cling to her life and her works of fiction.

 

In service of the former, she revisits the most notorious episode of Christie’s life: her disappearance for 11 days in December 1926, prompting blanket media coverage, an extensive police search and, after she had resurfaced at a hydropathic hotel in Harrogate, widespread suspicion that her tale of memory loss was an elaborate publicity stunt. In terms of the novels, Worsley’s focus is on debunking the assumption that Christie invented and epitomised what has become known as “cosy” crime fiction, pointing to the darker elements of her work, its modernity, and its increasing interest in psychological themes.

 

Is she convincing? Up to a point. These ways of thinking about Christie are not entirely new or unfamiliar, and although Worsley has evidently done due diligence among her subject’s correspondence and personal records, there are no major revelations. It’s more, perhaps, that she brings a clear-eyed empathy that allows her to acknowledge Christie’s limitations and prejudices without consigning her to the silos of mass-market populist and absentee mother.

 

Sometimes, this is a stretch. Worsley is correct to argue that dismissing the books as formulaic – algebraic, indeed – is a way of diminishing Christie’s power to graft an apparently impenetrable mystery on to an evocatively imagined and interestingly peopled setting, and to repeat the trick over and over again; such reductive ways of characterising the work of popular writers are still very much in evidence. Her gift for dialogue and for manipulating social stereotypes, as Worsley demonstrates, was formidable, keenly attuned to the proliferating class anxieties of the 20th century; numerous characters are, interestingly, transitional or dispossessed in some way, at odds with one view of her as a writer of the country-house elite. (This approach gets only so far when it comes to discussing her reliance on racist tropes, and particularly antisemitic slurs, on which Worsley maintains that we must accept her as a product of her class and time, but also that we must squarely face the reality of what she writes and not try to excuse it. The issue here is that, fundamentally, the circle cannot be squared and rests largely on whether one believes bigotry is, at some level, historically inescapable.)

 

This doesn’t quite amount to the claims made in one eyebrow-raising passage in the biography, in which Worsley appears to argue that Christie has common ground with the modernists whose defining moment came as her first novels were published: “What if the middlebrow and the modernist could actually be the same thing?” she writes. “A more inclusive definition of modernism might mean that you can also find it in works that don’t necessarily bludgeon you in the face with the shock of the new in the manner of Ulysses.” If you are going to rescue one writer from misunderstanding, it’s as well not to visit the same ignominy on another. And as much as The Murder of Roger Ackroyd’s ingenuity relies on the disruption of accepted narrative convention, I don’t think it has a lot in common with Virginia Woolf’s Jacob’s Room.

 

A Very Elusive Woman does, however, paint an intriguing picture of Christie as an upper-middle-class Victorian and Edwardian child whose life, then and later, encompassed significant losses and reversals of fortune, emotionally and materially. Perhaps counterintuitively, Worsley’s plummy-chummy tone bolsters rather than detracts from the seriousness with which she has evidently taken her task, as if she’s attempting to translate the sensibilities of a bygone era and mindset to contemporary life. Of Christie’s first husband, Archibald, whose adultery sparked that 1926 flight, she confides that a photograph of him impressed on her “an essential fact” that she hadn’t hitherto appreciated: “He was incredibly hot.” When Agatha is patronised by a chemist from whom she’s trying to learn about poisons, Worsley simply says: “Urgh”.

 

Where Worsley excels is in her descriptions of Christie’s day-to-day life; we hear virtually nothing of her political opinions as she lives through two world wars, for example, but we do glean a sense of her exceptionalism in the news that she consistently ignored air-raid sirens and simply turned over in bed. And she reports Christie’s almost compulsive buying of properties, her quiet, near-clandestine funding of her second husband’s archeological career and her love of rich food in a way that allows us to understand the version of home, love and stability she was trying to recreate. This may be the first biography I’ve read where my attention was genuinely piqued by the discussion of the subject’s tax affairs. Has Lucy Worsley tracked down Agatha Christie? Not quite, but her nose for diverting byways may suffice.

 

Agatha Christie: A Very Elusive Woman is published by Hodder & Stoughton(£25). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

BBC’s Agatha Christie: Lucy Worsley on the Mystery Queen - viewers ‘adored’ first episode on famous author

 

Historian Lucy Worsely delves into the life-tellings of Agatha Christie in new BBC documentary

 

Will Millar

By Will Millar

26th Nov 2022, 11:02am

https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/whats-on/arts-and-entertainment/bbcs-agatha-christie-lucy-worsley-on-the-mystery-queen-viewers-adored-first-episode-on-famous-author-3932602

 

Historian Lucy Worlsey delves into her mysterious life-tellings of the world’s most-famous detective writer in Agatha Christie: Lucy Worsley on the Mystery Queen. The BBC three-part documentary series aired last night and viewers are loving it.

 

Many Christie fans have paid good money to follow in the footsteps of the much-loved author, with countless tours taking place across the country at all times. Last night, viewers got to enjoy the experience at home as Lucy Worsley told a fantastic historic tale of the elusive Queen of crime.

 

In the BBC factual series, Worsely explores the life of Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie - a renowned novelist who has only been outsold by Shakespeare and the Bible. Christie wrote 75 novels, plays and countless short stories before she died in 1970, dedicating her life to the detective fiction genre.

 

Isokon Flats / How Agatha Christie spent the war in Hampstead

How Agatha Christie spent the war in Hampstead

18th May 2021

HERITAGE

HAMPSTEAD

 

By Bridget Galton

Features Editor and Associate Editor

https://www.hamhigh.co.uk/things-to-do/21333355.agatha-christie-spent-war-hampstead/

 

Agatha Christie's wartime stay at the Isokon flats - with fur coat, hot water bottle, and pillow over her head to drown out the blitz - is explored in a new exhibition.

 

Despite having homes in west London, Oxford and Devon, the famous crime writer and her Sealyham terrier James spent 1941 to 1947 living in a 25 metre square flat in what was advertised as the "safest building in London."

 

An exhibition opening on May 22 reveals how she enjoyed a prolific stage of her career, writing novels, stage plays, a memoir and radio play for Queen Mary's 80th birthday - which later became The Mousetrap - while living in Britain's first apartment block made from steel reinforced concrete.

 

By day she did her bit for the war with a part time job in University College Hospital's dispensary, then returned to her flat to write, often on two books simultaneously. At night she put a pillow over her head to block out the falling bombs and clutched her "two most treasured possessions" her water bottle and fur coat.

 

 

Christie's Devon home Greenway had been requisitioned by the American Navy, her archaeologist husband Max Mallowan posted to Egypt, and in the first week of the blitz, her Holland Park home was bombed.

 

Jack Pritchard, who commissioned Wells Coates to build the Lawn Road flats in 1934, promised residents a new, modern way of life. With a celebrated restaurant and bar, run by Philip Harben, it attracted an extraordinary community of intellectuals, artists and writers, and newly arrived exiles fleeing Nazi Germany.

 

"Pritchard took out an ad in The Times claiming he had the safest building in Britain - it wasn't true, if a bomb had landed on it it wouldn't have stood it," says Magnus Englund, Chair of the Isokon Gallery Trust.

 

He visited Christie's only grandson Mathew Prichard to sift through the family archive for references to the Isokon.

 

"I have a bomb map of Belsize Park and there were quite a few, a big one fell on the tennis courts at the back of the flats. During raids, residents gathered in the Isobar which had sandbags, but Christie stayed in her flat and continued to write in her fur coat with a pillow over her head. Extraordinary!"

 

In letters Christie wrote: “Coming up the street the flats looked just like a giant liner which ought to have had a couple of funnels, and then you went up the stairs and through the door of one’s flat and there were the trees tapping on the window.”

 

She also wrote: “I never found any difficulty writing during the War, as some people did; I suppose because I cut myself off into a different compartment of my mind. I could live in the book amongst the people I was writing about, and mutter their conversations and see them striding about the room I had invented for them."

 

Over six years Christie moved three times to bigger flats eventually knocking 16 and 17 together. She was also the only resident allowed a dog.

 

"I think Jack Pritchard gave her special dispensation because she was famous."

 

Sadly a claim that Christie's only spy novel N or M was inspired by Soviet spy recruiters who were residents is untrue. "It's the most common misunderstanding, but she wrote more than one book about spies, they were published in America just before she moved in, and the spies had all moved out by then."

 

Englund adds: "It was a revelation that she had written what became The Mousetrap at Lawn Road. On his seventh birthday Mathew asked for a bicycle and his grandmother gave him what he thought a very dull bit of paper - it was the rights to The Mousetrap.

 

"She is the most sold author in the world and lived there for six years, but no-one had ever looked at this period much before. Now we are telling the whole story."

 

The Agatha Christie exhibition runs May 22 until October 2022 at The Isokon Gallery in Lawn Road. Entry is free no booking required. The museum is dedicated to the story of the Grade I listed building and its famous former residents. Opening times 11-4pm every weekend.

 

https://isokongallery.org/

Isokon Flats

 

The Isokon building

Isokon Flats, also known as Lawn Road Flats and the Isokon building, on Lawn Road in the Belsize Park district of the London Borough of Camden, is a reinforced concrete block of 36 flats (originally 32), designed by Canadian engineer Wells Coates for Molly and Jack Pritchard.

 

Pre-war years

The designs for the flats were developed between 1929–1932 and opened on 9 July 1934 as an experiment in minimalist urban living. All of the "Existenzminimum" flats had very small kitchens as there was a communal kitchen for the preparation of meals, connected to the residential floors via a dumb waiter. Services, including laundry and shoe-polishing, were provided on site.

 

The building originally included 24 studio flats, eight one-bedroom flats, staff quarters, a kitchen and a large garage. The Pritchards lived in a one-bedroom penthouse flat at the top with their two sons Jeremy and Jonathan next door in a studio flat. Plywood was used extensively in the fittings of the apartments; Jack Pritchard was the Marketing Manager for the Estonian plywood company Venesta between 1926 and 1936, while he also operated the Isokon Furniture Company, originally in partnership with Wells Coates.

 

Celebrated residents included: Bauhaus émigrés Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, and László Moholy-Nagy; architects Egon Riss and Arthur Korn; Agatha Christie (between 1941 and 1947) and her husband Max Mallowan, art historian Adrian Stokes, the author Nicholas Monsarrat, the archaeologist V. Gordon Childe, modernist architect Jacques Groag and his wife textile designer Jacqueline Groag. The communal kitchen was converted into the Isobar restaurant in 1937, to a design by Marcel Breuer and F.R.S. Yorke. The flats and particularly the Isobar became renowned as a centre for socialist intellectual and artistic life in Hampstead and regular visitors to the Isobar included nearby residents Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson.

 

Espionage

A number of Isokon residents were later identified as Soviet agents and in the 1930s and Cold War period the building was subject to surveillance by the British security services In the mid-1930s Flat 7 was occupied by Dr Arnold Deutsch, the NKVD agent who recruited the Cambridge Five and Soviet spy Jürgen Kuczynski lived at Isokon while teaching economics at London University.

 

Post-war years

The Isokon furniture company ceased trading with the outbreak of World War II, but was restarted in 1963. The British architect Sir James Frazer Stirling was a resident during the early 1960s. In 1969 the building was sold to the New Statesman magazine and the Isobar was converted into flats. In 1972 the building was sold to Camden London Borough Council and gradually deteriorated until the 1990s when it was abandoned and lay derelict for several years.

 

Rescue and refurbishment

In 2003 the building was sympathetically refurbished by Avanti Architects, a practice which specialises in the refurbishment of Modernist buildings, for the Notting Hill Housing Association who purchased it from Camden London Borough Council. Notting Hill Housing Association remains the freeholder. During the comprehensive restoration, the services were completely renewed, heating and insulation discreetly upgraded and the later overcoat of render removed from the exterior. The building now has a smooth external finish and is the palest tint of pink in colour, like it first was when it opened, and not pure white as is often assumed from back and white historical photos. The building is now partly occupied by key workers under a shared-ownership scheme whilst the larger flats have been sold outright.

 

Isokon Gallery

As part of the refurbishment, an exhibition gallery was created in the former garage, run since 2014 wholly by volunteers as a non-profit micro-museum to tell the story of the building, the social and artistic life of its residents and Isokon furniture company. The gallery is open weekends only, 11.00 a.m. to 4.00 p.m. from the beginning of March until the end of October. Flats in the Isokon building are private and cannot be visited, except during Open House in September each year.

 

Designation

The building was designated a Grade I listed structure in 1999, placing it amongst the most significant historic buildings in England. An English Heritage blue plaque was fixed in 2018 to commemorate the residence of the Bauhaus masters Gropius, Breuer and Moholy-Nagy.

 

BUDD SHIRTMAKERS 3 PICCADILLY ARCADE, LONDON / VIDEO: What makes a Budd shirt? | Budd Shirts

Budd is a high-end tailor for shirts based in London's Piccadilly Arcade. Budd was founded in 1910, and is known to cater to many notable figures of British high society.

 

History

Budd was founded in 1910 by Harold Budd as an exclusively bespoke shirtmaker. Its original premises were located in Piccadilly Arcade, adjacent to Jermyn Street.[3] After bombing during the Blitz, Budd bought premises opposite the original store, which were the only premises in the Arcade still standing. It is now the only original member of the Arcade still operating.

 

In 1983, Budd was acquired by the Webster Brothers, another British shirtmaker founded in 1847.

 

In 2013, Budd was acquired by a group led by Stephen Murphy,[6] former owner of Saville Row tailor H. Huntsman & Sons and board member of the Brown Thomas Group.

 

In 2020 Budd collaborated with model and photographer, Laura Bailey and stylist Cathy Kasterine, to create a collection of shirts and nightwear for women under the Bailey x Budd label.

 

Methods and products

Budd is known for its highly traditional British style of shirtmaking, and is described by Spear's as demonstrating "heroic resistance to change". It is said to be the only remaining shirtmaker with a cutting room still above the shop. The primary Budd workshop is located in Andover.

 

Budd's best known pattern is the Budd Stripe, also called the Edwardian Stripe, which dates to the 1930s.It is also known for the Mess Shirt, originally made for army officers.

 

Today, Budd sells ready-to-wear shirts as well as providing a bespoke service. It also sells accessories including scarves, gloves, ties and collars.

 

Budd's shirts have also been worn by characters in film and TV, including Matt Smith in Doctor Who and Hugh Bonneville in Downton Abbey.

 

Budd was referenced in the lyrics of the song the "Best of Everything" in the 1919 musical La La Lucille by George Gershwin "I go to Budd for my cravats, Stetson makes my hats. A Rolls-Royce, the best thing on wheels was my choice of automobiles".

 

Budd after the bomb

In Off the Cuff & Heritage & Craft by Natalie 6th September 2013

https://www.buddshirts.co.uk/blog/2013/09/budd-bomb-2/

 

In April 1941, during WW2, St.James's was badly bombed. Dunhill, on the corner of Jermyn St, a few yards from Budd, took a direct hit. Then at 3 am on 17 April, the Luftwaffe dropped a 2200lb parachute bomb which detonated at rooftop height .The Piccadilly Arcade was devastated and Budd's shop at No 4 burnt down.

 

However, the spirit of the London Blitz was alive and well. Mr Dunhill  continued to sell his exclusive merchandise from a wheelbarrow on Jermyn St and Harold Budd immediately bought the leases on the only two habitable shops left standing in the arcade. Budd moved to Numbers 1A and 3 Piccadilly Arcade where it has been ever since.

 

The re-building of  the  Arcade after the bombing was not completed until 1957. However, because of this wartime disaster, Harold Budd was forced to reinvent his business.  Commercial realities forced the move away from exclusively  bespoke to include ready to wear. This was the beginning of Budd the haberdashers we know today selling not only shirts and ties but a whole range of accessories for a gentleman's wardrobe.

 

BUDD SHIRTMAKERS

https://web.archive.org/web/20181031173900/https://www.countryandtownhouse.co.uk/brands-guide/budd-shirtmakers/

 

Be it bespoke, made to measure or ready to wear, when it comes to the perfect shirt, there are no short cuts. Budd Shirtmakers, which has been cutting and making shirts by hand since 1910, wouldn’t have it any other way.

 

Budd is one of only a handful of truly authentic shirtmakers in the UK today and, sooner or later, anyone who cares about fit, cut, craftsmanship and quality makes a pilgrimage to its shop in the Piccadilly Arcade. Though the premises are tiny, they’re a veritable Pandora’s Box of shirts, ties, dresswear, nightwear and gentlemen’s haberdashery. If you can’t see what you’re looking for, it’s probably down in the stock room or hidden away in one of the many cupboards.

 

And there’s more: in the workroom above the shop are three of the best cutters in London, who not only cut and make the patterns for Budd’s bespoke shirts, but fit them as well, ensuring that customers’ measurements and special requests are recorded directly onto their pattern.

France's love affair with restaurants | France in Focus • FRANCE 24 English / Café Procope

The Café Procope in the Rue de l'Ancienne Comédie is a café in the 6th arrondissement of Paris. It was opened in 1686 by the Sicilian chef Procopio Cutò (also known by his Italian name Francesco Procopio dei Coltelli and his French name François Procope); it became a hub of the Parisian artistic and literary community in 18th and 19th centuries. It sometimes is called the oldest café of Paris in continuous operation; however, the original café closed in 1872 and did not reopen as a café until the 1920s, so the claim of "oldest café in continuous operation" is not entirely true.

 

Marie Antoinette and Napoleon are known to have frequented the restaurant.

 

Cutò first apprenticed under the leadership of an Armenian immigrant named Pascal who had a kiosk (une loge de la limonade, English: lemonade stand) on rue de Tournon selling refreshments, including lemonade and coffee. Pascal's attempt at such a business in Paris was not successful and he went to London in 1675, leaving the stall to Procopio.

 

History

Cutò relocated his kiosk in 1686 to rue des Fossés-Saint-Germain-des-Prés.[6] At the beginning, it was referred to as an "antre" (cavern or cave) because it was so dark inside, even when there was bright sunshine outside. Cutò purchased a bath house and had its unique fixtures removed; he installed in his new café items now standard in modern European cafés (crystal chandeliers, wall mirrors, marble tables).

 

It was a place where gentlemen of fashion might drink coffee, the exotic beverage that had previously been served in taverns, or eat a sorbet, served up in porcelain cups by waiters in exotic "Armenian" garb.[9][page needed] The escorted ladies, who appeared at the Café Procope in its earliest days, soon disappeared.

 

At Café Procope: at rear, from left to right: Condorcet, La Harpe, Voltaire (with his arm raised) and Diderot

 

In 1689, the Comédie-Française opened its doors in a theatre across the street from his café – hence the street's modern name. By this stroke of fortune, the café attracted many actors, writers, musicians, poets, philosophers, revolutionaries, statesmen, scientists, dramatists, stage artists, playwrights, and literary critics. It was to the Procope, on 18 December 1752, that Rousseau retired, before the performance of Narcisse, his last play, had even finished, saying publicly how boring it all was on the stage, now that he had seen it mounted.

 

It was the unexampled mix of habitués that surprised visitors, though no-one remarked on the absence of women. Louis, chevalier de Mailly, in Les Entretiens des caffés, 1702, remarked:

 

The cafés are most agreeable places, and ones where one finds all sorts of people of different characters. There one sees fine young gentlemen, agreeably enjoying themselves; there one sees the savants who come to leave aside the laborious spirit of the study; there one sees others whose gravity and plumpness stand in for merit. Those, in a raised voice, often impose silence on the deftest wit, and rouse themselves to praise everything that is to be blamed, and blame everything that is worthy of praise. How entertaining for those of spirit to see originals setting themselves up as arbiters of good taste and deciding with an imperious tone what is over their depth!

 

In 1702, Cutò changed his name to the gallicized François Procope, and renamed the business to Café Procope, the name by which it is still known today. Prior to that, it had been known only as the "boutique at the sign of the Holy Shroud of Turin", which was the name of the previous business at the location.

 

Throughout the 18th century, the brasserie Procope was the meeting place of the intellectual establishment, and of the nouvellistes of the scandal-gossip trade, whose remarks at Procope were repeated in the police reports. Not all the Encyclopédistes drank forty cups of coffee a day like Voltaire, who mixed his with chocolate, but they all met at Café Procope, as did Benjamin Franklin, John Paul Jones and Thomas Jefferson.

 

Le Procope is in 18th-century style

There are words above the door at Cutò's establishment that read: Café à la Voltaire.[10] Voltaire is known to have said, "Ice cream is exquisite. What a pity it isn’t illegal."

 

The birthplace of the Encyclopédie, conceived by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert, is said to be at Café Procope.

 

Alain-René Lesage described the hubbub at Procope in La Valise Trouvée (1772): "There is an ebb and flow of all conditions of men, nobles and cooks, wits and sots, pell mell, all chattering in full chorus to their heart's content", indicating an increasingly democratic mix. Writing a few years after the death of Voltaire, Louis-Sébastien Mercier noted:

 

All the works of this Paris-born writer seem to have been made for the capital. It was foremost in his mind when he wrote. While composing, he was looking towards the French Academy, the public of Comédie française, the Café Procope, and a circle of young musketeers. He hardly ever had anything else in sight.

 

During the Revolution, the Phrygian cap, soon to be the symbol of Liberty, was first displayed at the Procope. The Cordeliers, Robespierre, Danton and Marat all used the café as a meeting place. After the Restoration, another famous customer was Alexander von Humboldt who, during the 1820s, lunched there every day from 11am to noon. The Café Procope retained its literary cachet; Alfred de Musset, George Sand, Gustave Planche, the philosopher Pierre Leroux, M. Coquille, editor of Le Monde, Anatole France and Mikael Printz were all regulars. Under the Second Empire, August Jean-Marie Vermorel of Le Reforme or Léon Gambetta[23] would expound their plans for social reform.

 

In the 1860s, the Conférence Molé held its meetings at the Café Procope. Léon Gambetta, like many other French orators, learned the art of public speaking at the Molé. Other active members during this period included Ernest Picard, Clément Laurier and Léon Renault.

 

A plaque at the establishment claims that it is the oldest continually-functioning café in the world.

 

Café Procope. Here founded Procopio dei Coltelli in 1686 the oldest coffeehouse of the world and the most famous center of the literary and philosophic life of the 18th and 19th centuries. It was frequented by La Fontaine, Voltaire and the Encyclopedistes: Benjamin Franklin, Danton, Marat, Robespierre, Napoleon Bonaparte, Balzac, Victor Hugo, Gambetta, Verlaine and Anatole France.

 

However, the claim is not entirely true. The original Café Procopes closed its doors in 1872, and the property was acquired by a woman by the name of Baronne Thénard, who leased it to a Théo Bellefonds, under the condition that he preserved the café's atmosphere. Bellefonds opened a private artist's club and established a journal entitled Le Procope, neither of which were very successful.[26] The premises then became the Restaurant Procope,[27] and in the 1920s, it was changed back to a café called Au Grand Soleil. At some point, a new owner realised the marketing value of the original name and rechristened it Café Procope.[26]

 

In 1988–89, the Café Procope was refurbished in an 18th-century style. It received Pompeian red walls, crystal chandeliers, 18th-century oval portraits of famous people who had been patrons, and a tinkly piano. The waiters were dressed in quasi-revolutionary uniforms.

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