Jacques Reattu (French, 1760-1833), Half length figure of semi-nude man, 1789

Jacques Reattu (French, 1760-1833), Half length figure of semi-nude man, 1789

Period Empire Presentation Cafe' au Lait cup & saucer dated Aug 31,1812

Period Empire Presentation Cafe' au Lait cup and saucer dated Aug 31,1812 

I collect French Paris porcelain 19th century Cafe' au Lait cup and saucers. Around 2002 while in Paris I discovered a pair of young antiques dealers that specialized in French Paris porcelain. The name of there shop named after them" Daniel et Vincent Antiques" located on 19 rue Molière. I bought from them this lovely 1st Empire Presentation Cafe' au Lait cup and saucer. When I first saw it I thought it was a mourning piece of porcelain but Daniel & Vincent explained to me that during the early 19th century it was a fad with the Bourgeoisie to present to your wife a Cafe' au Lait cup with your newborn baby painted on the front as a presentation gift. I cup of this quality would have not been used and most likely would have been displayed in a glass front cabinet.  

Cafe' au Lait birth cups like the one we see here were considered fitting presents to a new mother. These were only gifted after the baby arrived. In the 18th and 19th century giving a gift before the birth seemed inappropriate given the fact that many mothers and children did not survive childbirth. The manufacture of porcelain has always been competitive, costly and notoriously risky. These factors forced the Paris manufacturers to broader their clientele continually through the introduction of new colors and forms and by devising new, attractive uses to which porcelain objects could be put. This quest for novel and appealing goods led to the production of a staggering array of dinner, dessert, tea and coffee services; toilette sets; clocks; desk accoutrements; garniture objects; lighting devices and even such architectural elements as mantelpieces.

The cup is beautifully painted with a blonde hair, blue eyed baby with outreached arm coming from a cloud. The interior of the cup has rich thick gold gilt and a NeoClassical rosette at the bottom. The Saucer has gold bands with the words in French, Leon and Jsabelle the 31 of Aug, 1812.  Leon and Jsabelle are the names of the parents of this lovely child and we have the birthday of the child. The cup is not signed by the manufacturer as most Paris porcelain is not signed. This charming 200 plus years old cup and saucer leaves questions. What was the child's first name? Did he/she live to be a adult? What were the parents last name?  So many questions.  We still have this beautiful personalized piece of art to enjoy of craftsmanship of days gone by. 

 The interior of the cup has rich thick gold gilt and a NeoClassical rosette at the bottom. The Saucer has gold bands with the words in French, Leon and Jsabelle the 31 of Aug, 1812.

 The interior of the cup has rich thick gold gilt and a NeoClassical rosette at the bottom. The Saucer has gold bands with the words in French, Leon and Jsabelle the 31 of Aug, 1812.

Period Empire Presentation Cafe' au Lait cup and saucer dated Aug 31,1812 

Henri Auguste. Coronation ewer with winged figure. 1804.

Henri Auguste. Coronation ewer with winged figure. 1804.

Silver-gilt.

Château de Fontainebleau. Fontainebleau, France.

"Portrait of a Military Family" by an unknown French artist (1789-1790)

"Portrait of a Military Family" by an unknown French artist (1789-1790) 

Creole Vanity by Andrew LaMar Hopkins

Creole Vanity by Andrew LaMar Hopkins

My latest painting titled" Creole Vanity" a play on words. Showing a fashionable 1820's New Orleans Creole bedroom. With a French Creole woman at her dressing table caressing her image reflected in mahogany and ormolu Empire dressing table vanity mirror. The bedroom has a early 19th century Louisiana beehive leg armoire with brass ball feet. Wallpaper border hatboxes sit atop the armoire. Next to the armoire and under the window are a pair of Charles X bergères. 

On the side of the armoire are two gilt framed hand colored engravings of roses by Pierre-Joseph Redouté. He was nicknamed "The Raphael of flowers". He was an official court artist of Queen Marie Antoinette, and he continued painting through the French Revolution and Reign of Terror. Redouté survived the turbulent political upheaval to gain international recognition for his precise renderings of plants, which remain as fresh in the early 21st century as when first painted. On the window sill is a Classical English Regency bronze urn. 

A American bedstead in the French taste by French-born maître ébéniste Charles-Honoré Lannuier working in New York city. The bedstead has a carved and gilded "Pelican in her piety" on the top of the tester, A symbol of the Catholic church and used in Louisiana on the state flag and seal.  Above the seated lady are oil portraits of her husband and son in gilt Empire frames. Her poodle sits on the bed. The NeoClassical Empire carpet is a Savonnerie. The Savonnerie manufactory was the most prestigious European manufactory of knotted-pile carpets, enjoying its greatest period c. 1650–1685; the cachet of its name is casually applied to many knotted-pile carpets made at other centers. 

The revival of the Savonnerie in the early 19th century after the Revolution is due to the patronage of Napoleon, who commissioned carpets after 1805 in the Empire style like the Savonnerie depicted in the painting. New cartoons were designed by Percier and Fontaine. The baseboards of the room are marbleized to look like black Egyptian gold vain marble. On the Savonnerie carpet is a 18th century gilded and velvet dog kennel in the Louis XVI style. 

A American bedstead in the French taste by French-born maître ébéniste Charles-Honoré Lannuier working in New York city. The bedstead has a carved and gilded "Pelican in her piety" on the top of the tester, A symbol of the Catholic church and used in Louisiana on the state flag and seal. 

A American bedstead in the French taste by French-born maître ébéniste Charles-Honoré Lannuier working in New York city. 

18th and 19th century New Orleans was a hot a humid place before AC with lot's of rain and swamps from Spring until Fall. Most windows were open to allow air circulation in rooms. Because of this mosquitoes  invaded the space. So one could get a good nights rest from blood sucking pests fashionably alternatives were used in the South. Mosquito curtains. Panels of mosquito netting mounted on the tester that could be pulled out to surround the bed at night to block intrusive pests or opened during the day for the elegant look of  curtains.

A American bedstead in the French taste by French-born maître ébéniste Charles-Honoré Lannuier working in New York city. The bedstead has a carved and gilded "Pelican in her piety" on the top of the tester, A symbol of the Catholic church and used in Louisiana on the state flag and seal. 

My latest painting titled" Creole Vanity" a play on words. Showing a fashionable 1820's New Orleans Creole bedroom. With a French Creole woman at her dressing table caressing her image reflected in mahogany and ormolu Empire dressing table vanity mirror. 

A 1820's French Engraving where I got the ideal for the lady 

Next to the armoire and under the window are a pair of Charles X bergères.

Charles X bergère

A lap dog sits on the Classical bed

18th and 19th century New Orleans was a hot a humid place before AC with lot's of rain and swamps from Spring until Fall. Most windows were open to allow air circulation in rooms. Because of this mosquitoes  invaded the space. So one could get a good nights rest from blood sucking pests fashionably alternatives were used in the South. Mosquito curtains. Panels of mosquito netting mounted on the tester that could be pulled out to surround the bed at night to block intrusive pests or opened during the day for the elegant look of  curtains.

 Above the seated lady are oil portraits of her husband and son in gilt Empire frames.

The bedroom has a early 19th century Louisiana beehive leg armoire with brass ball feet. Wallpaper border hatboxes sit atop the armoire.

 Louisiana beehive leg armoire

Early 19th century Wallpaper border hatbox

Early 19th century Wallpaper border hatbox

Early 19th century hand colored rose engraving by Pierre-Joseph Redouté 

He was nicknamed "The Raphael of flowers".

He was an official court artist of Queen Marie Antoinette, and he continued painting through the French Revolution and Reign of Terror. Redouté survived the turbulent political upheaval to gain international recognition for his precise renderings of plants, which remain as fresh in the early 21st century as when first painted.

Paris was the cultural and scientific centre of Europe during an outstanding period in botanical illustration (1798 – 1837), one noted for the publication of several folio books with coloured plates. Enthusiastically, Redouté became an heir to the tradition of the Flemish and Dutch flower painters Brueghel, Ruysch, van Huysum and de Heem. Redouté contributed over 2,100 published plates depicting over 1,800 different species, many never rendered before.

The detail of the carpet shown in the photograph has a Classical swan motif . Josephine was very fond of swans and had black swans imported from Australia to swim in her lake at Malmaison.

Black swan in New Orleans City park 

 Classical English Regency bronze urn

On the Savonnerie carpet is a 18th century gilded and velvet dog kennel in the Louis XVI style. 

NeoClassical Empire Savonnerie carpet

 18th century gilded and velvet dog kennel that belonged to French Queen Marie Antoinette 

The bedstead has a carved and gilded "Pelican in her piety" on the top of the tester, A symbol of the Catholic church and used in Louisiana on the state flag and seal.

Detail of a tabernacle doors at Montpellier's cathedral (Cathédrale Saint-Pierre de Montpellier) showing the  "Pelican in her piety"

The heraldic device of a mother Pelican, plucking at her own breast in order to draw blood for the nurture of her young, is one that spans at least 7 centuries. Many family crests, churches and cathedrals across the Christian world display such an image. 

Some medieval bestiaries describe the young as pecking at the paternal bird who, in angry response, strikes back at them, inflicting mortal wounds. The adult bird is so grieved by its actions that it pierces its own breast (known as vulning - hence the word vulnerable) and on the third day he draws blood which, when spilt onto the young, revives them. 

The Pelican-in-her-Piety is an allegorical depiction of Jesus Christ, in both His sacrificial love and resurrection. In an age when literacy was limited, the image of the Pelican-in-her-Piety would have been recognisable and understood by everyone who saw it and was, in particular, interpreted as being symbolic of the Eucharist. 

18th and 19th century New Orleans was a hot a humid place before AC with lot's of rain and swamps from Spring until Fall. Most windows were open to allow air circulation in rooms. Because of this mosquitoes  invaded the space. So one could get a good nights rest from blood sucking pests fashionably alternatives were used in the South. Mosquito curtains. Panels of mosquito netting mounted on the tester that could be pulled out to surround the bed at night to block intrusive pests or opened during the day for the elegant look of  curtains.

French Empire Classical portrait of a boy 

Creole Vanity by Andrew LaMar Hopkins

You can follow my artwork on my facebook page https://www.facebook.com/andrewhopkinsfolkart

Drawing of a male nude by Jacques Reattu, 1760-1833. France

Drawing of a male nude by Jacques Reattu, 1760-1833. France

Victorian Junkies - Cocaine For Toothache and Other Class A Victorian Oddities by Jenni Shelton

"Cocaine toothache drops", 1885 advertisement of cocaine for dental pain in children.

This Victorian advert for ‘cocaine toothache drops’ seems thoroughly shocking nowadays. The very idea of giving cocaine to children in any form, let alone in the form of a ‘cure’ seems horrific to those who know the addictive and destructive qualities of the drug. However, for the Victorians it was quite a different story. It does not take a lot of poking about in Victorian antique ephemera to come across a variety of quite legitimate posters advertising drugs, drug-taking paraphernalia, and even pharmaceutical bottles containing remnants of Class A substances sold over the counter. Far from the straight-laced and rigidly proper characters we now think of them as, the evidence seems clear: vast swathes of Victorian society were off their heads on drugs.

Cocaine

Cocaine has been used since at least 3,000 BC, in the form of chewed coca leaves. The indigenous people of the Peruvian Andes chewed the leaves in order to stimulate their cardiovascular systems and thus counteract the effects of the thin mountain air. Indeed, this practice still continues today – the Bolivian government recently petitioned the UN to allow its indigenous population to continue their traditional use of coca leaves. It was even used by Spanish conquistadors to render South American forced laborers more biddable. However, the active ingredient of coca leaves was not isolated and transformed into the form we now know as ‘cocaine’ until the Victorian era – whereupon it took off in a big way. Sigmund Freud was among the first to rave about its benefits. He published a paper entitled ‘Uber Coca’, in which he claimed cocaine to be a ‘magical’ drug which should be prescribed for a variety of conditions, including depression and impotence. He continued his advocacy of cocaine despite noticing that it led to physical, moral, and mental decline, and despite the shocking hallucinations many of his patients experienced while on the drug. In 1886, John Pemberton mixed up a recipe for a new soft drink containing coca leaves. ‘Coca-cola’ – so named for its cocaine content – is no longer a Class A substance, but back in Victorian times it became very popular very quickly due to its euphoric effects. Before long, cocaine was being added to a vast variety of things, ranging from tonics to toothache drops. Advertisements, bottles, cocaine pipes and more are commonly found by the collector of Victorian ephemera. More worryingly, cocaine was often mixed into deadly ‘elixirs’ containing those other Victorian ‘miracle’ drugs – opiates.

An Opium Den, Chinatown, San Francisco, California.

Laudanum and Opium

The Victorian opiate of choice was laudanum – a tincture of opium, which was considered a miraculous panacea and prescribed for everything from mild headaches to cancer. You didn’t have to have a prescription to get it, though. It could be freely bought over the counter, and no pharmacist worth their salt would be without laudanum in both liquid and pill form. Laudanum is largely responsible for the popular image of the interestingly pale Victorian lady wasting glamorously away within her boudoir. It promoted lethargy and loss of appetite, as well as rendering users more or less mentally incapable of doing anything other than lie around in a state of confused euphoria. Nurses even spoonfed laudanum to teething babies – resulting in numerous tragic infant deaths. Babies were not the only ones to die from laudanum overdose, however. Although the precise number of laudanum-related deaths remains unknown (it was often prescribed for terminal diseases, and early death simply attributed to said diseases), it is certain that many perished. The artist Elizabeth Siddal – wife of pre-Raphaelite painter, poet, and conspicuous addict Dante Gabriel Rossetti – was cripplingly addicted to laudanum, and died of an overdose, as did many other less high-profile Victorians. The problem was heightened when laudanum began to be supplemented with stronger opium. Smoked through pipes in ‘opium dens’, this Chinese drug swiftly began to take hold of Victorian society. Its effects were shocking, and began to alert the Victorians and early Edwardians to the fact that use of narcotics could have serious and widespread drawbacks. Late Victorian literature abounds with descriptions of heavy-lidded men recumbent in smoky opium dens, faces gaunt and chests hollow, their entire being given up to the drug upon which they have become dependent. It was a shock for those who had previously confined drug habits to the sickroom and private boudoir, and a very visible wake up call for governments and health authorities. Clearly, something had to be done.

Opium smokers in the East End of London, 1874. From the Illustrated London News, 1 August 1874

Developing Treatments

Modern addicts have a plethora of treatment resources available to them. They can draw upon years of medical knowledge and experience in the field of substance withdrawal, and enjoy the benefits of psychiatric expertise into the addict’s state of mind. Psychological and physical problems can be dealt with, and extensive support networks exist for those who wish to utilise them. Our ancestors had no such luck. Addiction was seen as a moral flaw rather than a mental and physical problem, and doctors thus tried to cure it through such profoundly ineffective methods as stern punishment and prayer. Many addicts were confined to ‘inebriate asylums’, where they received inhumane ‘treatments’ such as being strapped down and sluiced with ice-cold water. Unsurprisingly, these had very little effect upon the problem. However, when the addict returned to their substance of choice after release, it was put down to entrenched moral degeneracy rather than to failure on the part of the treatment. It was only when the wealthy and influential began to seek surreptitious treatment for their addictions that substance abuse treatment became an area of serious scientific study. More humane ‘drying out’ houses for the rich were established, where they could go through medically supervised withdrawal. However, it was not until the 1960s that drug addiction treatments began to comprise more than just seeing an addict through the stages of withdrawal, and it is only very recently that some breakthroughs have been made in understanding the science of addiction.