This floral toile is loosely based on an early toile from Alsace which had a charming, almost faux-naïf sentiment which Graham Robertson of ROBERTSON MEAD has retained in his own edition.

Malmaison, Empress Joséphine's beloved home, perhaps the truly great love of her life, was the catalyst in Joséphine's realisation of her passionate love of flowers.

Originally associated with sadness and known as the "Evil House" in the Middle Ages, Malmaison is believed to have been a hospice for lepers. Later it witnessed the closing chapters of the Napoleonic saga.

When Joséphine and Napoléon bought Malmaison it was in a hopelessly dilapidated condition and she had to borrow the deposit of 15,000 francs from the estate steward.

The pair was yet to acquire the grand titles of Emperor and Empress, but as conqueror of Italy he returned with a vast deal of loot which was dispersed to his various palaces including Malmaison.

Joséphine gradually turned Malmaison into a jewel box.

Both partners were enamoured of the new pre-Romantic "Troubadour Style" characterised by the gardens and hot-houses and which harked back to the Middle Ages. The gardens became among the greatest in the world.

The pink climbing rose,"Souvenir de la Malmaison", so linked with Joséphine, was not actually developed until 1840, well after her death in 1813. In fact roses did not at first interest Joséphine, nor were they esteemed in 18th century France, coming after tulips, hyacinths and carnations in general interest.

Military stripes, an essential feature of Percier Fontaine's Empire Style, especially camellias, and later roses and peonies, which Redouté has made eternal, were propagated in the flowers in her hot-houses. Joséphine got her gardeners to propogate flowers which were striped to be imitative of the striped tents of Napoléon's army.

She sourced, requested (and sometimes bought), seeds and seedlings from all over. Some arrived as gifts on French naval ships from exotic parts of the world - even from Kew in London, with whom Napoléon was hardly friendly.

Her passion for flowers rivalled that of the Sun King and Malmaison became the focus of the happiest hours of the pair right up almost to the divorce.

Joséphine's first husband had been executed during the Terror. As a widow with two children to support, she was forced to survive in a France wrecked by revolution and in desperate need of restructuring. As mistress of the dissipated Barras, head of the Directoire and one of the most odious characters in European history, she lived partly at the Palais du Luxembourg.

Along with Mesdames Tallien and Récamier, Joséphine brought what little charm and grace there was to be seen in post-revolutionary Paris, where the devil took the hindmost.

Joséphine was "passed" by Barras to Napoléon who gave her an almost bourgeois stability, although later her outrageous and famous extravagance caused terrible scenes between the newly-weds.

In her declining years Joséphine was alone and unhappy but had the luck to have been granted full ownership of Malmaison by Napoléon, along with the Elysée Palace in Paris and a palatial but cold and gloomy château in Normandy, which she hated.

Joséphine died of cancer at Malmaison on 29 May 1814 in the presence of her children, Eugène and Hortense (Viceroy of Italy and Queen of Holland). She was almost 51. She died in her bed chamber - the style of which was well depicted in the incredible Metro Goldwyn Mayer bed chamber (created for her by Percier Fontaine) - with gilded swans, overlooking the park and the great cedar of Marengo.

Joséphine's tomb (built by funds from her children) can be seen in the church at Rueil - only a short walk from Malmaison - where her body was escorted by the Russian militia, then in Paris, and a silent, respectful crowd of mourners.

One can walk down the same walled lane her cortege took today, but the gardens are only a shadow of their former glory.

There is a touching story of the Emperor as house prisoner of one of Wellington's generals after Waterloo in 1815. Napoléon had requested that he spend his last two nights in France in the bed of his adored ex-wife almost two years after her death. The humane British officer agreed. Napoléon left Malmaison at 3am in the dark, leaving by the small footbridge leading out from his library, into final exile on St Helena.

After its 19th century facelift, at enormous expense to the couple, Malmaison fell into decay once again, until its splendid 20th century rehabilitation. Napoléon's Chambre de Conseil was redecorated in the manner of Percier Fontaine, the original Empire architect, by Eric Ahlfors* of Sydney as part of a team in the late sixties.

In 1815, after the death of Joséphine, some of the magnificent contents of Malmaison were sold by auction, mostly to Czar Alexander I (the pictures can be seen in the Hermitage), and Brazilian collectors. A second sale, the catalogue of which can be seen in the British Museum, took place at Malmaison on 24th March 1819. Some of Joséphine's silver is now in a ski lodge in the Canadian Laurentians.

Eric Elfors in a team of 4, trained at the École Boulle in Paris. They also worked "in a general capacity" at Versailles and on Marie Antoinette's rooms at Fontainebleu. Eric also upholsters in wall upholstery - a very French thing.