glassworks of Saint-Louis-lès-Bitche between 1779 and 1781. In order to maintain initial levels of activity Gabriel d'Artigues was forced to hand over the company to three wealthier partners: Pierre-Antoine Godard-Desmarest, a former director of military supplies under the Empire, François-Marie-Augustin Lescuyer-Vespin, a landowner in Charleville, and Nicolas-Rémy Lolot, a trader in Charleville. The full buy-out of shares was completed for the sum of FF 396,000. It was paid by the three partners in 1822 and 1823. Prior to 1823, the wealthy Parisian, Pierre-Antoine Godard-Desmarest had also purchased the glassworks of Trélon in the Thiérache region of northern France. This was a small factory near vast forests producing huge amounts of timber, which until then had been manufacturing pane glass. In 1824, the crystal glassworks obtained the legal status of a limited company. Godard-Desmarest senior entrusted the management of the company to a young polytechnic engineer, Jean-Baptiste Toussaint. This decision gave rise to two family dynasties, one owning the company's capital, the other managing the business. Baccarat received its first royal commission in 1823 from King Louis XVIII. This was the beginning of a lengthy series of orders from royal families and heads of state from all over the world. The factory benefited from an extraordinary boom linked to strong international growth on the luxury market. Additionally, the strategic choice of location made by A.G. d'Artigues proved to be ideal: in the Vosges foothills, from Épinal to Blamont, Rambervillers, Lunéville and Moyen, a whole number of busy earthenware factories would buy back even the smallest amounts of glass-crystal waste to manufacture faience tableware. In 1841, the arrival of a thirty-year-old engineer, François-Eugène de Fontenay, already an expert at the Plaine de Walsch factory, whose operations had extended to Vallerysthal, launched the production of coloured glass. This researcher had conducted studies into ways to color glass and now, promoted to assistant director, he developed the first multicolored paperweights made of crystal. The range of manufactured products using watermarked glass engraved with a B was a great success in France and on the export market between 1846 and 1895. In 1855, Baccarat won its first gold medal, at the World's Fair in Paris. In 1860, Baccarat registered its trademark on all its products (at the time this was a simple label stuck onto each piece). The mark was a label affixed to the bottom of the work. In the period 1846-1849 Baccarat signed