Objects

This “Baron d’Empire” diploma was granted to Colonel Charles Bouge at the end of March 1808 and confirmed in January 1809. He was in the first wave of Barons d’Empire, the title having been created on 1 March 1808. Charles Bouge embraced the French Revolution: he was captain in the 2nd Battalion of Volunteers of […]

Description * Similar to Dragoon Guards in the British Army Wrought iron cuirass (2 – 3 mm) of the same type as that used by French cuirassiers, plated (up to 25 mm from the edge) with “red brass” (= copper). The cuirass comprises a breast- and back-plate, joined by shoulder parts. The breastplate (“plastron” in […]

This ensemble of two necklaces, a pair of bracelets, a diadem, a brooch, a pendant and six pins, attributed to jewellers Marie-Étienne Nitot and François-Régnault Nitot (father and son), is decorated with cameos in malachite, natural pearls, yellow gold and tortoiseshell. All except three of the cameos have antique-style figures on them, female or male profiles. The two […]

In June 2018, the Musée du Louvre issued a press release* informing the general public that they had solved a mystery more than 150 years old. Since 1862, the museum has owned a bronze finger, 38 cm in height, clearly a fragment from the hand of an ancient statue. The only thing we knew about […]

The jewellery worn by the Ladies in Waiting or Dames of Empress Eugenie’s Household are indicative of the sumptuous nature of the Empire and the brilliant technicity of French jewellery. The broach here also had a practical use: unlike the men in service to the crown, the ladies had no uniform. A specific broach was […]

In the decree of 10 July 1804, Napoleon I stipulated that the new imperial coat of arms should be “d’azur à l’aigle à l’antique d’or, empiétant un foudre du même” (“azure, with an eagle in the manner of antiquity, coloured gold, clutching in its talons a thunderbolt of the same colour”). After the proclamation of […]

This posthumous portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte carved in marble must be one of the most curious works to come out of the studio of French sculptor Auguste Rodin. It was commissioned in 1904 by the American collector Kate Seney Simpson,The daughter of a Brooklyn banker and art collector, George I. Seney and wife of New […]

6 November 1857, Madame, I needed all the prodigious presumption of a poet to dare to trouble your Majesty and bring to her attention a case as petty as my own. I have had the misfortune to be condemned for a collection of poems entitled “The Flowers of evil”, whose horribly frank title was not […]

The phonautograph, the first machine ever to record sound, was invented during the Second Empire, in 1853, by the Frenchman Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville (1817-1879). Using a technique analogous to that of today’s seismometer (which converts earth tremors into a visual signal), the phonoautograph consisted of a membrane, placed at the end of an acoustic […]

Click here for an enlargement The first playing cards appeared in Europe at the beginning of the 14th century. However, even as late as the 18th century, they were by no means unified in their style. In France, the pack comprised the four classic suits – spades, diamonds, hearts and clubs (the French word trèfle […]