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This cup and saucer were made for an elite market in emulation of famous royal dinner services. In 1807 Napoleon I gave the Russian czar a spectacular Egyptian-style dinner service made at Sëvres. A similar set was commissioned for Napoleon\'s empress, Josephine, as part of her divorce settlement in 1809. Josephine rejected it, however, and in 1818 Louis XVIII gave it to the Duke of Wellington. The almost whimsical vocabulary of pseudo-Egyptian hieroglyphs on the objects seen here was inspired freely by illustrations of actual inscriptions published at the time.
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