A pair of Empire painted tole Carcel Lamps decorated with botehs

A rare pair of Empire Carcel Lamps, in painted tôle decorated with red botehs on white and gold. In the form of columns highlighted with gilded bases and capitals and surmounted by glass globes adorned with stars.
Probably supplied by the Manufacture des métaux et laque, established rue Martel in Paris in 1807.
Paris by 1810

Fitted for electricity

The decoration of this pair of lamps is inspired by the motifs of the precious Kashmir shawls, decorated with palm leaves called botehs, which were sold at incredibly high prices in Paris and in London in the first decade of the 19th century.

These shawls were introduced in Paris by French officers on their return from the Egyptian campaign, where they were used as turbans or belts. In his memoirs Constant, Napoleon's valet, recounts that the arrival of the Ottoman ambassador Ali Efendi Morah Seyyid at the Tuileries in June 1802 caused a sensation, “because he brought a large quantity of cashmere to the First Consul, which 'we were sure that they would be distributed and that each woman would flatter herself with being favorably treated.”

The long shawls from the province of Kashmir in India are then the most popular. Measuring more than three meters by one and a half meters, they are woven with Tibetan goat down, which gives them an incomparable softness. The weaving of a single shawl requires the work of two or three men for more than eighteen months, which explains the very high cost of these pieces of fabric, which have become the accessory of a very privileged clientele. The Empress Josephine collected them with such avidity and owned so many copies that an inventory was drawn up by color.

The portrait of the Empress Joséphine in a cashmere gown and a cashmere coat painted by Antoine Jean Gros in 1809, now kept at the Masséna Museum in Nice, illustrates the craze for these long shalls in white wool adorned with red botehs, the patterns of which is the decor of our pair of lamps. Although it may seem relatively simple to us, this dress worn by the Empress is an ultimate luxury, which is the prerogative of a small, very wealthy elite.

The craze for these accessories from the Orient, the most expensive and the most sought after, is reflected at the same time in the decorative arts. The Turkish boudoir of the Hôtel de Beauharnais in Paris echoes the Turkish boudoir of Fontainebleau, created at the end of the 18th century for Queen Marie Antoinette and invested under the Empire by Empress Joséphine. The dream of the Orient still inspired exotic decorations at the beginning of the 19th century.

These lamps witness the fascination for these precious shawls, and this exotic motif is particularly rare in this production of painted tole objects from the beginning of the 19th century.