The subject of this article is the Wild & Wessel factory in Berlin, one of the foremost producers of kerosene lamps in Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century. The success of this factory was due in large part to its founding directors’ dual emphasis on art and technology: they hired well-known and respected contemporary artists to design and prototype their lamps, and spent large sums on research and development. This, and their emphasis on catering to an inclusive market with a range of low to high price points, on thoughtful merchandising and branding, and on streamlining production, put Emil Wild and Wilhelm Wessel in the footprint of Josiah Wedgwood, often seen as the pioneer of entrepreneurship.

Lightning artists—entertainers who rapidly drew images for live audiences—flourished as a popular theatrical genre during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Later exerting a strong influence on the nascent field of motion-picture animation, such performances became a “sensation” in 1873 with the sudden popularity of the French caricaturist Victor Collodion on the London stage. Though Collodion’s whirlwind career was tragically brief, professional rivals quickly developed his novel type of performance into a standard variety-show offering that relied upon audience familiarity with photographic mass culture in the form of cartes de visite and cabinet cards.

Shortly before World War I, Alexandre Berthier, the fourth Prince of Wagram, acquired the reputation of a modern aristocrat, with an immense fortune and an advanced taste for innovative art. A database constructed from the systematic study of the Berthier papers provides a better understanding of the extent and function of his renowned collection. Relying on this tool, this paper argues that Berthier’s collection acted as an immaterial and fluid form of accounting under the veneer of a well-appointed apartment, in which works of art came and went, gaining in value by their association with Berthier’s name.