She wore no makeup or jewelry, save for an enameled school badge pinned to her regulation navy blazer.

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So enthralled was Fedorovna with the piece--an enameled egg with a golden yoke, golden hen, miniature diamond crown and ruby egg inside--that the czar commissioned a new egg every Easter.

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Time is indicated by chimes, and rather than hands, intricately enameled dials depict a girl chasing a kite across Paris on one watch, while a love-struck man watches a shooting star over the Eiffel Tower on the other.

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James I, the Scotsman who reigned while Shakespeare wrote many of his masterpieces, including "Macbeth, " is portrayed in the Lyte Jewel, an enameled gold locket bearing on its cover (reversed at left) the royal monogram IR, for the Latin Jacobus Rex.

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The impossible-to-replicate dinanderie vases (hand-hammered metalwork with applied metal inlays), the enameled cigarette cases depicting streets in Paris, the spiked walking sticks that are petrified stingray tails and the cocktail goblets dancing on their zigzagging silver stems, won't be making appearances on store shelves.

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The flooring is dark, the passageways plain and the lighting democratic, giving shards of earthenware as much attention as finely woven rugs from Iran, a jewel-encrusted dagger from Mughal India or 14th-century enameled blown-glass lamps from Egypt and Syria that are about as close to numinous as objects can get.

WSJ: Islamic Art at the Louvre | By Lee Lawrence