Crystal liqueur glass with cut sides, engraved with its initial M in Gothic character under an imperial crown, resting on an octagonal base with baluster barrel.

Very good condition.

Unknown factory, Second Empire period (1852-1870).

H. 10.5 cm.

Princess Mathilde Bonaparte, niece of Emperor Napoleon I.

A carafe from the same service engraved with the same cipher, sold at Osenat, March 23, 2014, lot 386.

Mathilde Bonaparte was born in 1820, daughter of King Jerome of Westphalia (last brother of Napoleon I) and sister of Prince Napoleon, she was first proposed in marriage by her cousin Louis-Napoleon, the future Napoleon III. This project was unsuccessful and she married the Russian prince Anatole Demidoff, from whom she separated after four years. After the Emperor's marriage, she lived outside the Tuileries and led a free life according to her tastes in Paris or Saint-Gratien. Favorable to Russia and to Italian unity, she represents like her brother, but with more restraint, the left of the Empire. In fact, its role is different, it protects writers, whatever their political ideas: Flaubert, Gautier, Sainte-Beuve, the Goncourt, Taine crowd in his salons. After September 4, 1870 and at the fall of the Empire, she took refuge for some time in Belgium, but ended her long life in France and died in Paris on January 2, 1904.