A day in Paris is being organised to visit two important exhibitions: The Grand Dauphin at Versailles (closing on 15 February), and Le Trésor retrouvé du Roi Soleil (The Sun King's rediscovered Treasure) running at the Grand Palais for one week only, 1 - 8 February.

The cost of the study day is £125 and includes entry fees and transfer from Versailles to the Grand Palais by private coach, but not accommodation, which should be booked individually if required.

Applications for this trip are being accepted on a first-come, first-served basis. To register your interest, please e-mail the Overseas Events Manager at overseasevents@furniturehistorysociety.org.

Grande Galerie Savonnerie carpet no. 78, 'Peace', delivered by Dupont on 16 April 1681, Mobilier National, Paris, GMT 2067 (9.1 x 4.4m)

The Grand Dauphin (1661-1711), Son of a King, Father of a King, but never a King (until 15 February 2026) is the first exhibition devoted to Louis de France, eldest son of Louis XIV of France and Maria Theresa of Spain, and father of Louis XV. Through 250 objects, many on loan from important collections outside France and representing all forms of art, this exhibition examines the life of this forgotten heir to the French throne, an important aesthete and collector and a significant figure of the French Grand Siècle.

Highlights of the exhibition include the pair of sculptural bronze Chenets de l’Algarde, from the Wallace Collection, gems from the Dauphin’s Treasure from Museo del Prado, a pair of commodes from the Spanish royal collections – lent outside Spain for the first time – and the famous Fonthill Vase from the National Museum of Ireland. Our guide will be Exhibition Curator, Lionel Arsac, who will welcome our group at 11.30 am.

In the afternoon we will be given a tour by Dr Wolf Burchard of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, of Le Trésor retrouvé du Roi Soleil (The Sun King's rediscovered Treasure), the exhibition he has co-curated with Emmanuelle Federspiel and Antonin Macé de Lépinay of the Mobilier National.

This special exhibition will show, for the first time, thirty Grande Galerie Savonnerie carpets displayed together as originally intended. This luxurious, seventeeth-century royal floor stretches more than 140 metres (twice the length of the Hall of Mirrors) and took two manufactories, Dupont and Lourdet, more than 25 years to complete. Yet, despite the monumental expense and energy lavished on this spectacular royal commission, Louis XIV appears never to have used the carpets. Originally intended to make up one huge carpet for the Grande Galerie of the Louvre, with time the notion of ‘one’ carpet was forgotten, and individual pieces were given away as diplomatic gifts or lost in the aftermath of the French Revolution.

Some carpets and fragments later found their way into the homes of English and American collectors, notably the Rothschilds, the Vanderbilts, J. P. Morgan and Mrs Charles Wrightsman. The dispersed carpets thus became an enormous jigsaw puzzle, which Emmanuelle Federspiel, Antonin Macé de Lepinay and Wolf Burchard are reconstructing. Their research will be published in a monograph, Les tapis du Roi-Soleil (2026).

The Mobilier National’s event will be followed by an exhibition of Louis XIV Savonnerie carpets in the Wrightsman Galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, curated by Wolf Burchard and Elizabeth Cleland, opening in autumn 2026.

Wolf Burchard, Antonin Macé de Lepinay, and Elizabeth Cleland examine the Tapis Grande Galerie du Louvre in the Mobilier national, 2023; photo: Justine Rossignol.