Apron of the Master of the Masonic lodge 'The friends of the King of Rome and Napoleon'

During the period of the Illyrian Provinces (1809-1813), a French-Illyrian freemasonry lodge called The Friends of the King of Rome and Napoleon (Les Amis du Roi de Rome et de Napoleon) was founded in 1811 and ceremonially inaugurated in Ljubljana dancehall on 12 October 1812. It functioned until the departure of the French in 1813. As well as foreign, mainly French, Italian and Austrian freemasons, the lodge had fifteen Carniolan members – know as Illyrians – from various professions: lawyers, judges, merchants, musicians and officials in the French-Illyrian administration. The apron of the Master of the lodge The Friends of the King of Rome and Napoleon was modelled on French examples. On it, together with a beehive, are depicted a sword and open book with skull and crossbones; to the left and right are placed a mirror, a globe with a coiled snake, worked and rough stones and freemasonry tools: a protractor, a pair of compasses and a hammer. At the sides are two pillars of the lodge; pillar J with a blue sky and a moon above it and pillar B with nine stars. Between them is a board with sixteen black and white squares to a row, and a circular temple rising above it, over which is a golden cloud with a sun in the centre. Each image on the master’s apron has special meaning in the context of Masonic symbolism. According to experts, this apron is original because of the depiction of the bees and the straw hive, which are a metaphor for the collective and the individual, simultaneously worldliness and spirituality.