Royal Warrants and Royal Patronage at Leuchars & Son
Leuchars London
Royal Patronage
The British court. The French Empire. The surviving record.
Read the storyRoyal and imperial patronage
From the British court
to the French Empire.
Leuchars enjoyed British royal and French imperial patronage. Surviving objects and billheads record the house’s service to Queen Victoria, the Prince of Wales, and the Emperor and Empress of the French—Napoléon III and Empress Eugénie.
The record survives in the objects themselves: engraved makers’ plates, printed heraldry and the words the house placed above its name.
British royal patronage
Maker to the Queen.
Queen Victoria’s Royal Warrant forms part of Leuchars’ history as a London case maker. The association appears on surviving fitted objects as well as the house’s commercial stationery.
“TO HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN.”
The billhead continues beneath the Royal Arms: “AND H.R.H. THE PRINCE OF WALES.” The prince was Albert Edward, the future Edward VII.
The designation on surviving objects
A coromandel jewellery box catalogued by Daniel Lucian as early 1860s bears the plate “W. Leuchars – Maker To The Queen – 38 Piccadilly London”. A second, catalogued as mid-1860s, names H.R.H. the Prince of Wales. These inscriptions complement the printed billhead.
The Piccadilly house
Lucy Leuchars.
A London address.
Lucy Leuchars continued the family business at 38 Piccadilly. The Furniture History Society’s maker records document her place in the history of writing desks and dressing cases.
Later histories date the house’s appointment to Queen Victoria to 1837. The Archive follows the sources and their limits.
Lucy Leuchars in the ArchiveFrench imperial patronage
The Emperor
& the Empress.
The French connection is named just as directly. Above the Napoleonic imperial arms, the house printed:
“TO THE EMPEROR & EMPRESS OF THE FRENCH.”
Napoléon III and Empress Eugénie belong together in the Leuchars story. The designation names both, alongside a Paris address at 2 Rue de la Paix.
Discover the imperial connectionOne house. London and Paris.
The billhead places London beside the British Royal Arms and Paris beside the French imperial arms. Beneath the name are the addresses 38 & 39 Piccadilly and 2 Rue de la Paix.
Its list of specialisms brings the house into focus: dressing and writing cases, travelling bags, stationery, ormolu, clocks, candelabra, bronzes and objects of art. Royal and imperial patronage formed part of the identity of this specialist house.
Two dated documents
The invoice reproduced here is dated 31 March 1877 and is preserved in the present Leuchars collection. Its original printed headings supply the quotations used on this page. Surviving object inscriptions provide a second, complementary record.
The newly recorded bill of 1 March 1877 carries the same royal and imperial designations. Its different date and handwritten transaction distinguish it from the 31 March invoice illustrated above. Examine the complete record.
These designations describe the historical house and its patrons. Their appearance on stationery used in 1877 does not establish a new or continuing French imperial appointment at that date.
An Austrian imperial provenance
A separate object history connects Leuchars to Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria. Dorotheum catalogued a travelling writing kit as his personal property, with provenance through Archduchess Marie Valerie and her heirs. The study follows that catalogue attribution and the fitted case it describes.
Sources and objects
Leuchars & Son invoice, 31 March 1877, present Leuchars collection: full original photograph. Object references: Daniel Lucian DL235, jewellery box with Queen designation and DL117, jewellery box with Prince of Wales designation. Further reading: Lucy Leuchars, Archive Record 004.
The opening is an imagined campaign scene. The billhead details are edited photographs of the original receipt, supplied by Leuchars London.
