A carnet de bal, or dance card, was a fashionable accessory often carried by women attending a formal dance to record the names of the gentlemen with whom she would dance over the course of the evening. Occasionally, the carnet de bal would be executed as a fan, allowing a lady to write down her...

Early in the eighteenth century, France was eager to imitate British success in exports of woolen textiles, especially to the Levant, an area roughly defined as a region of the eastern Mediterranean including Turkey and Egypt and points in between. By 1720, the French had vastly improved the quality of their woolens, and a system...