Egyptian Coffee Service of Napoleon I

Thirty-six pieces of porcelain in deep blue and gold make up this coffee service, called a cabaret. Look at the straight-sided cups of the shape known as litron and at the pots: each carries a coloured Egyptian landscape, a temple, a pyramid, a bank of the Nile, painted by Nicolas-Antoine Lebel. The saucers carry portraits in grey monochrome by Antoine Béranger. Around them the gilder Pierre-Louis Micaud drew hieroglyphs on the rich beau bleu ground; they look convincing but are pure fantasy, since the script was not deciphered until eighteen twenty-two. Every view is copied from the plates of the Travels in Lower and Upper Egypt published in eighteen hundred and two by Dominique Vivant Denon, who had accompanied Bonaparte's expedition and later became the first director of the Louvre.