Hat badge

This engraved badge design may have been a prototype for the insignia on hats worn by soldiers of the French regiment known as the Chasseurs D' Orleans (1842-1848). The regiment was named in commemoration of Prince Ferdinand-Philippe of Orléans who died in July 1842. When the Royal Family were exiled from France in 1848 the regiment was renamed "chasseurs à pied".

It is one of a group of objects from the workshop of the Swiss engraver, Jean Julien Faucherre ( 1805-1891). He was born and trained in Switzerland but worked in France from about 1830 to 1841 when he settled in London. In 1857, he was described as a master watch engraver but the surviving material, although including watch dials, demonstrates wider involvement in the silversmithing trade from electrotyped dressing table boxes to engraved panels for carriage clocks. It is very rare to find so much documented material from one of the smaller workshops in the trade. His work would have been largely anonymous and sold under the name of larger silversmiths or retailers of the Victorian period.