A bed with gilt bronze details made by the Jacob brothers — the most celebrated cabinetmakers of late 18th-century Paris — is preserved at the Louvre today. It was made for Juliette Récamier, one of the most prominent women of the post-Revolutionary period. Objects like this one are at the centre of Emma Schwak's doctoral research at the EUI Department of History.
Emma came to study this particular period through her PhD. Her earlier work focused on the late Ancien Régime, and the doctoral project at the EUI shifted her attention forward, into the years between the fall of the old order and the end of Napoleon's rule, roughly from 1795 to 1815. What drew her was a gap.
“While art historians have said so much about the objects and styles of this era — to the point where ‘Empire style’ remains synonymous with refinement and luxury in auction houses today — there was very little research on what these objects actually meant to the people who used or wore them,” she explains. “I wanted to look past the aesthetics to understand the social significance of these possessions.”
That significance came into focus against a period of upheaval. Emma's research challenges the assumption of a clean social break after the Revolution. “One goal of my thesis is to nuance the idea of a total social break where the bourgeoisie simply took over from the nobility,” she says. “The reality was more complicated. The Ancien Régime nobility still held power and aristocratic taste prevailed. However, new classes did emerge from the fortunes rapidly made during the Revolution: the new Napoleonic nobility, and a rising class of bankers and financiers. Money, rather than rank, began to assert one's social position.”
In that world, luxury objects carried more symbolic meaning than ever. And buying power was not enough on its own. “Being rich was not enough,” Emma says. “One needed to have bon goût.”
That need created a new kind of cultural figure. “We see the rise of ‘taste-makers’ who recognised these new classes and answered their need to educate their taste in gastronomy, fashion, and interior decoration,” Emma explains. Among the writers shaping taste, she points to figures like Grimod de la Reynière and Pierre de la Mésangère, who were able to bridge the aristocratic manners of the old world with the desires of a new generation. Among women, the shift was equally striking. “Women became leaders of fashion - not as royal mistresses, but as the wives of financiers and bankers, such as Juliette Récamier or Fortunée Hamelin.”
Emma places this development within a longer intellectual history. “It is important to frame this rise of luxury as a social marker within the post-Revolutionary context, but also within the querelle du luxe, the debate on luxury that raged throughout the 18th century.”
The parallels with today are hard to miss. “I think I can safely say that this period saw the first ‘influencers’,” Emma says. “While there had been prominent figures to copy, this era witnessed the emergence of people who actively wanted to guide public taste.” She points to Grimod de la Reynière's Almanach des Gourmands, which provided specific recommendations on where to buy the best wine, bread, or pâté. “Just as food influencers do on Instagram today. The core idea remains: the suggestion that going to certain places or owning certain items will give someone social standing.”
Emma finds these patterns through a wide range of sources. “I look at many types of sources, which makes the process very exciting,” she says. “An important source is the press of the time: mostly the fashion press, including the famous Journal des Dames et des Modes, but also shorter-lived and lesser-known titles.” She also works with design manuals and architectural treatises that shaped interior decoration, artists' sketches, and literature from the period. “On the more technical side, I use official records created by Napoleonic officials, such as lists of the most taxed individuals and moral surveys, and, of course, post-mortem inventories and the objects themselves.”
Among those objects, one category stands out. “There was a general obsession during this period with beds, which says a lot not only about the evolution of styles but also about the vision of intimacy,” Emma says. “The most private spaces, namely the bedroom and the bathroom, were catalysing the display of luxury. The fashion press featured many stories about the luxurious bed a merveilleuse ought to possess, and post-mortem inventories reflect their importance, as well as the extortionate prices people paid for all the gilt bronze details, mattresses, and muslin curtains.”
The question of why we remain drawn to the material lives of the wealthy is one Emma has thought about. “Is it curiosity or envy?” she asks. “Perhaps it is because the material remains of these periods are biased: Archives and museums have preserved the objects of the elite rather than those of the lower classes.” She also sees, however, a methodological reason. “It is at the level of the elite that you can best observe phenomena such as ostentation and the use of objects for social distinction. For me, there is a definite fascination with the beauty of these interiors or clothes, but the goal is to go beyond the aesthetic and make sense of why these objects existed.”
Being at the EUI has shaped how she approaches the material. “In France, Napoleonic studies can be quite a traditional, 'Franco-French' field,” Emma explains. “Being at the EUI allows me to take this period into a more modern space. It's not just about digging out a new archive, but about the methodological approach: looking at the social history of the elite through the lens of material culture and interdisciplinary research.”
But not every inventory tells a story of abundance, and not every life leaves a clear trace. “In the absence of first-person testimonies, much remains silent,” Emma says, “but I do feel I am shown glimpses of their lives from which I can make assumptions.”
One such glimpse came recently, when Emma examined the records of a woman who had been married to one of the wealthiest financiers of the day. “He had divorced her so they were no longer associated in front of the law, allowing him to protect his fortune,” she explains. “I didn't expect to find that she possessed almost nothing at the end of her life, just a few dresses and rags, even though her children were among the wealthiest families in France.”
This woman had been part of the world Emma describes throughout her research. It is the world of financiers and taste-makers, of gilded beds and fashionable interiors. In that world, objects made people visible. Without them, a person could disappear from the record entirely.
“What happened to her,” Emma says, “is the silence left in the archive.”
Emma Schwak is a PhD researcher in the EUI Department of History. Her doctoral thesis, L'opulence éclairée: Material Culture and the Social Construction of Parisian Elites from the Directoire to the Premier Empire (1795–1815), examines how luxury objects and material culture shaped the social identity of Parisian elites in the years between revolution and empire. Her research is supervised by Carlotta Sorba, with Lauren Kassell as second reader.
Painting: Jacques-Louis David, Portrait of Madame Récamier (1800). Photo: Cafedelyon / Wikimedia Commons. Cropped. CC BY-SA 3.0