This is a Staffordshire Ceramic figure of Louis Napoleon, most known by everyone as Napoleon the 3rd.
I will tell you his story in a moment, as he was one of the most important figures of the 19th century and his life story is related to our city of Portsmouth.
First, though I will tell you a few words about this item here which we, of course, have for sale on sallyantiques.co.uk along with many other similar pieces of the same period.
The Staffordshire Pottery Figures are earthenware figures made in England, mainly in the county of Staffordshire, but also in other counties and in Scotland.
The broadest use of the term would include all such pieces made between 1740 and 1960.
From 1780 onwards we can actually categorize them as
Pratt Ware 1780-1840
Pre-Victorian Staffordshire 1800-1837
Victorian Staffordshire 1837-1900
1890-1960 Kent figures
The choice of subject matter for these ceramic figures evolved in response to the general taste. Two subjects remained popular throughout the entire period though - the lions and the dogs.
The earlier Prattware designs depicted historical and heroic figures but also ordinary soldiers and sailors and characters you will meet in your daily life. This current continued somehow in the early to mid-Victorian manufacturing period with some distinctive characteristics though.
If you will like to see some of these early pieces please visit our sallyantiques.co.uk website as we have quite a number of very well preserved examples for sale there.
The distinguishing features of the new Victorian wave are a characteristic blue tinge to the white lead glaze; a decorated front but only from circa 1845; the concave bases of the figurines; the rich cobalt blue until circa 1860; the absence of makers marks and the old dull gilt.
The Staffordshire figures were very popular among the working-class especially in the victorian age.
The public was hungry for images now and they were no longer interested in imitation pieces. Most ordinary folk could not read, therefore modelers, inspired by theatre programs, music covers, popular culture, London Illustrated News, Tallis Shakespeare Gallery (1853), Punch, etc., transposed 'Today's News' into clay images. Riding the wave of the young Queen Victoria's huge popularity, and with an expanding market to town and city buyers, sales of pottery figures exploded.
Most of you probably know that he was the nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte and that after the French revolution of 1848 was elected as the first president of France (from 1848 to 1852) and its las Emperor (from 1852 to 1870). We will cover these events in an episode to follow as we have some very interesting items from the period to show you.
As a historical figure, he is one of the architects of modern Europe and modern France. He commissioned a grand reconstruction of Paris, modernized the French banking system, expanded and consolidated the French railway system, and made the French merchant navy the second largest in the world. He promoted the building of the Suez Canal and established modern agriculture, which ended famines in France and made France an agricultural exporter. Napoleon III negotiated the 1860 Cobden–Chevalier free trade agreement with Britain and similar agreements with France's other European trading partners. Its social reforms included giving French workers the right to strike and the right to organize. During his reign the first women students were admitted at the Sorbonne and educational opportunities for women were increased, as did the list of required subjects in public schools.
In foreign policy, Napoleon III aimed to reassert French influence in Europe and around the world. In Europe, he allied with Britain and defeated Russia in the Crimean War (1853–56). His regime assisted Italian unification by defeating the Austrian Empire in the Franco-Austrian War and later annexed Savoy and the County of Nice as its deferred reward. At the same time, his forces defended the Papal States against annexation by Italy.
He was also for the creation of my home country, Romania.
Napoleon III doubled the area of the French overseas empire in Asia, the Pacific and Africa.
You can of course read more about him online.
He lost his throne due to the war with Prussia 1870-1871 and was exiled to England where he arrived on 20 March 1871. He lived for a short while few streets away from where we are now and settled at Camden Place.
Napoleon died on 9 January 1873 and was originally buried at St Mary's, the Catholic Church in Chislehurst.
However, after his son, an officer in the British Army, died in 1879 fighting against the Zulus in South Africa, his wife Eugénie decided to build a monastery and a chapel for the remains of Napoleon III and their son. In 1888, the bodies were moved to the Imperial Crypt at St Michael's Abbey, Farnborough, Hampshire, England.

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