The Gem Bouquet

If such things can be judged by the quality of gifts, Maria Theresia (on the right) must have loved Franz Stephan (on the left) a great deal indeed: knowing of his passion for the natural sciences, the Austrian Empress presented her husband with a bouquet of gems.

Leaves of silk, 761 precious stones, and 2,102 diamonds make up a bouquet of varied flowers, adorned with insects, and situated inside a rock crystal vase. The Empress placed it nonchalantly in the Emperor's Mineral Cabinet on a fine spring morning in the middle years of the eighteenth century. And thus began the Precious Stone collection of what is now The Natural History Museum of Vienna.

Although the bouquet, made especially at the request of the Empress, is traditionally ascribed to Michael von Gosser, a Viennese jewler, there is evidence that it may, in fact, have been crafted by Franfurter Georg Gottfried Lautensack.