Mark:
The Florentine experiments and the Pisa bowls remain as solitary relics in the story of European porcelain until the year 1673, when the scene is shifted to France. At this date a privilege was granted for making porcelain to Edme Poterat, of St. Sever, a suburb of Rouen, in the name of his son Louis. Since 1644 he had been working as a faïencier as lessee of the Sieur Poirel de Grandval, huissier de cabinet to Anne of Austria; the Sieur Poirel had been granted an exclusive licence for making faïence in the province of Normandy. The manufacture of porcelain at Rouen was not continued for long after the death of Poterat in 1694, in consequence of a dispute between his sons, which resulted in their privilege being withdrawn. The nature of this earliest French porcelain is established by a few pieces, which there are sufficient grounds for supposing to be authentic. One of these is at South Kensington, a tall cup finely fashioned in a paste of bluish tone and carefully painted in a strong underglaze blue; the design consists of small vases of flowers amid formal lambrequin ornament below a castellated border.
A point of special interest in connection with the earliest French experiments is that, while the efforts of their authors were consciously directed at the emulation of Oriental porcelain, the style of decoration adopted by them was thoroughly French, showing hardly any trace of Chinese influence. The surviving Rouen specimens are closely similar in their ornament to the faïence produced by the factory in which they were made. The same is true of the porcelain manufactured, for the first time in Europe on a commercial scale, at St. Cloud, near Paris. This factory was started by a Rouen potter named Pierre Chicaneau for the making of earthenware. As the result of experiments made shortly before his death, Chicaneau could boast of producing objects in porcelain “presqu’aussi parfait que les porcelaines de la Chine et des Indes.” His widow and family continued the work he had begun, and in 1702 were granted letters patent by Louis XIV.; the factory was subsequently carried on by Henri Trou, second husband of Chicaneau’s widow. The jar reproduced in [Plate 12] illustrates admirably the style in vogue at the St. Cloud works. Formal devices adapted from Rouen faïence and inspired by the designs of Bérain, are symmetrically disposed as borders, leaving a large part of the surface free, so as to display to full advantage the soft tone of the glaze. The sense of fitness and proportion never absent from the best French work asserts itself as much in the painted ornament as in the rich ormolu mount with which the jar is embellished. The legs of console outline and the rayed masks between them are typical forms of the art of Louis XIV.’s reign; instinct as they are with sober dignity, they are saved from stiffness of effect by the contrast of the band of running foliage engraved on the collar round the top of the jar.
Painting in blue under the glaze was the predominant manner of decoration at St. Cloud. In other cases the porcelain is left white, and only moulded ornaments are used; these are either copied directly from the Chinese Fuchien porcelain,—here at last Oriental motives appear,—or they exhibit a hybrid mingling of classical and Chinese forms. The latter type is seen in a fine soup-tureen in the Fitzhenry gift at South Kensington; it is moulded with pseudo-Oriental cranes and foliage in relief above a gadrooned border, and has grotesque mask handles and a knob in the form of a cabbage. The tureen is of special interest because to the relief decoration has been added enamel colouring in primrose-yellow, green, and pale red; an examination of the piece discloses on the bottom, not only the incised mark of Henri Trou, but also a fleur-de-lys in overglaze blue, showing that the colouring was added at the Spanish royal factory of Buen Retiro. Another tureen in the same collection has polychrome painting executed at St. Cloud, a typical example of a rare class; in a strong orange-yellow, green, purple, red and blue are depicted Oriental figures and a motive of a bird singing among trees by a wattled hedge, borrowed from the Japanese Kakiyemon.
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The life of the St. Cloud works was a long one,—it lasted till 1766, having survived a disastrous fire in 1737,—and its output must have been considerable; yet it had little direct influence on the subsequent history of ceramics. It is indeed interesting to note here the existence at Kensington of a seau in Staffordshire salt-glazed stoneware with relief ornament copied from a St. Cloud model; but this is an isolated case, and imitations of St. Cloud are not common even among the productions of French factories. A different tale can be told of the next in importance of the early French china works. The factory founded in 1725 by Louis-Henri de Bourbon, prince de Condé, on his domain at Chantilly, was destined to hold a position of more than transient significance. Not only were styles of decoration devised there which became popular beyond the Channel as well as in France itself; Chantilly has a greater claim to recognition in that it was two Chantilly workmen who initiated the greatest of all European enterprises of this kind, the royal and national manufactory at Sèvres.
Before entering into details of this passage in the course of events, some account must be given of the productions of the parent factory. The prince de Condé chose for his director one Ciquaire Cirou, who appears to have been a faïence-maker, and obtained royal recognition by a grant of letters patent in 1735. The distinguishing element in the earlier Chantilly porcelain is the use as a surface-coating of the same tin-enamel which is the generic feature of faïence. For some ten years the Chantilly potters confined their artistic efforts as far as painting was concerned to adaptations or often close imitations of Oriental porcelain of the preceding decades, of which the princely patron had a rich collection. The Chinese famille verte supplied the motives in a few instances, but the wares which suggested to Cirou and his painters their daintiest designs were the work of Kakiyemon. Few things have been made to display more effectively the delicate freshness which is the crowning virtue of painted porcelain. The warm tone of the stanniferous glaze yields a softer ground for the flower-like hues of the enamel colours than the colder white of the Japanese prototypes, while the esprit of the French interpreter adds to the charming Eastern themes just that homeliness of touch which endears them to Western beholders. No better illustration could be furnished than by the little silver-mounted pot de toilette from Mr. Fitzhenry’s gift to the nation, figured in [Plate 13]. Little Japanese boys at play, houses perched among fir-trees on rocky crags, tiny birds and butterflies are scattered with an unimpeachable sense of fitness over the creamy white surface; all, down to the mark on the bottom, a cour de chasse in red enamel, is drawn with the greatest neatness.
A ground colour of pure primrose-yellow is sometimes seen in pieces of this early period, borrowed doubtless from Meissen, and foreshadowing the sumptuous coloured grounds of Vincennes and Sèvres. This is well exemplified by a large jardinière with rococo ormolu mounting, also in the Fitzhenry gift. At a later date less distinctive manners were adopted, bouquets of flowers of the Meissen type, cupids in the style of Boucher, and rococo-panelled designs. The manufacture was commercialised and the quality of the wares rapidly deteriorated, but still a good word may be said for the blue festooned borders which are a common feature in Chantilly services, and are an admirable pattern of what designs in table ware should be. An instance is the service made for Louis Philippe, duc d’Orléans, for use at his château of Villers-Cotterets; a plate from this set is in the Kensington collection.