Objects : 4
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Object / St HelenaCrucifix which was placed on Napoleon’s body during his lying-in-stateThis cross was the one which was placed on Napoleon’s body, as depicted in many of the drawings made at the scene the day after his death and also in later imagined representations such as that by Mauzaisse (1843) showing the Emperor’s corpse dressed in his…
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Object / Directoire-Consulat-Ier Empire/Directory-Consulate-1st EmpireA fall-front ‘secrétaire’ (writing desk)Although Biennais is today associated with gold and silverware, he began his career as a “tabletier” [maker of small objects] in Paris in 1788 (Arch. nat. Y. 9334). A tabletier’s shop was where you could buy any of a thousand small objects, useful or not,…
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Object“Tact” watch belonging to Jerome Bonaparte, King of Westphalia
Swiss-born Abraham-Louis Bréguet was encouraged to go into watchmaking by his step-father Joseph Tattet, who came from a family of watchmakers and had a showroom in Paris. Bréguet completed his apprenticeship under an horlogist in Versailles. He established his own house in Paris in 1775 on the Quai de l’Horloge and became a master in […]
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ObjectNapoleon’s terrestrial and celestial globes from Longwood
Both globes had been part of the furniture at Plantation House since 1805. In July 1816, the Governor Sir Hudson Lowe had them sent to Longwood House where they were installed in the parlour also known as the billiard room. Virtually all the witnesses of the exile mentioned in their writings these “two globes, one […]