The question we are asked most
Two benches.
Two stories.
There has been a bench on Danish television that resembles ours. Customers ask whether one of them is fake. The short answer is no — they are two different objects with separate origins, and that is exactly what one should expect.
The story
What the Danish story says
As reported in the Danish press, in outline:
- In exile, Napoleon acquires an English Chippendale garden bench and sits on it looking out over the Atlantic.
- On his death the bench travels with his effects to France and ends up in the garden at Malmaison. It is said to have been exhibited later at the Louvre, to have decayed, to have gone into store, and to have been brought out again for the bicentenary of his death in 2021.
- About a hundred years ago a Danish architect visits the garden, draws the bench and has a cabinetmaker build four copies in Denmark. Two go to his sister in Lund, who paints hers Chinese red.
- Søren Ryge sees the bench in 1990 and again in 2005, borrows it and has the cabinetmaker Henrik Meinhardt build an exact copy — half a year’s work in Spessart oak, 71 pieces of timber joined with 142 mortises and tenons, without nails, screws or fittings.
- DR broadcasts a programme about it in 2007, in which Peter A.G. performs at the inauguration.
What is documented
The Danish half of the story — points 3 to 5 — rests on named, checkable sources:
- DR’s own press material on the 2007 programme and the inauguration with Peter A.G.
- The programme itself, about 28 minutes, preserved and retrievable in the DR archive at the Royal Danish Library.
- A substantial article in Kristeligt Dagblad, 2 December 2023, which is the principal source for the whole chain.
- A follow-up in the same paper, 28 September 2024, on the cabinetmaker’s restoration of the bench.
A programme that sits in the national broadcast archive, appears in the broadcaster’s own press material and has been covered twice by a national daily seventeen years apart is not an invented story. The Danish part is in fact better documented than most claims in circulation about benches of this type.
What is not
The weakness lies in the Napoleonic half — points 1 and 2:
- There is no documented connection between the Chippendale workshop and the Bonaparte family. No commission, no correspondence.
- The Longwood furniture was procured by the British government and the East India Company from whatever could be shipped or found. By 1815 the Chippendale firm was in its final decline; the son had gone bankrupt in 1804.
- The chronology limps: the bench is said to have reached «Joséphine’s garden at Malmaison» after 1821, but Joséphine died in 1814. Malmaison continued and changed hands, so it need not be an error — but it has not been traced back to a primary source.
- The Louvre and 2021 elements are reported at second hand and unsupported.
It is worth noting: this is the same kind of weakness found in the claim about our own bench that we have chosen to stop using. Read it here.
The difference
It is not the same bench
The cross lattice was published in 1754 and copied freely across Europe and the colonies for two hundred years. That is why «Chippendale» survives as the name of a style and not as a maker’s mark. Two benches in the same pattern with separate histories is the expected thing, not a contradiction.
| Our bench | The bench from the programme | |
|---|---|---|
| Original | The bench standing at Longwood House, Saint Helena | A bench in a Danish garden, copied from a family piece |
| Material | A-grade teak, for outdoor use all year | Spessart oak |
| Route here | Measured on the island; manufactured under licence | Drawn in France a hundred years ago; copied twice in Denmark |
| Authority | Exclusive licence from SHNH, who administer the domains | None claimed — a private commission |
| Colour | Longwood green, Napoléon Vert Empire | Chinese red |
| Availability | Made to order, numbered, 250 in the anniversary series | One cabinetmaker, 300+ hours |
Our position
Short and precise
We make no pronouncements about other benches or other stories. Our bench is a faithful reproduction in teak of the bench at Longwood House, built under an exclusive worldwide licence from Saint Helena Napoleonic Heritage Ltd, with twelve per cent of every sale going back to the conservation of the French domains on the island. The Chippendale lattice has been reproduced in Europe since 1754; that others have made benches in that form is a fact and no objection to ours.
We have no need for anyone else’s story to be untrue. We need it to be a different story — which it is. And we would rather be the place where you can read what is supported and what is not than the place where you have to take our word for it.