Known for his piety and his acts of charity, Guillaume Franconis (1646-1722) at the same time lived in a luxury illustrative of the Genevan elites’ habits. When he died in 1722, at the age of 76, the inventory of his goods revealed a home somewhat worn by time but full of echoes of his trading in remote goods. There were indiennes both in his stock of cloth and in his widow’s wardrobe, or decorating their beds. Objects termed “from the Indes” and distributed in Europe were often adapted from the very start to Western uses. This was the case for a beautiful lacquered cabinet from Japan which Franconis gave to his city’s Library in 1707: with its numerous little drawers used to keep collections of curiosities, shells or petrifactions very popular
at the time, it is characteristic of produce made for export. Useful in the Library, it would only become part of ethnographic collections later. D. Buyssens