DECORATIVE LACQUER TRAY - ÉTOILE

STORY BEHIND ÉTOILE LACQUER DECORATIVE TRAY

Genius is a form of passion: a single-minded devotion to understanding something greater than ourselves.

For Tycho Brahe this meant conquering nothing short of the heavens. So much so, that he lost his nose to the sword of a fellow Danish nobleman and mathematician, duelling over a math problem at a friend’s wedding. From age 20, he would sport a precious-metal prosthetic for the rest of his life.

Auspicious beginnings for the prodigy whose revolutionary model of the universe would cause as many scientific breakthroughs as his lifestyle spawned gossip.

Finding favour from King Frederik II in the form of a private island, Brahe would entertain royalty, scientists and sybarites alike. But his more extravagant predilections would soon propel him to exile at the court of the Holy Roman Emperor in Prague, where his masterful genius and madcap capers went on unabated.

It was after taking on a certain young man named Johannes Kepler as his equally fiery protégé that our noble astronomer soon met his end. Some even said Kepler helped him along… then claimed the Laws of Planetary Motion for himself.

But what’s a little spat with the Universe at stake?