Porcelain

by Edward Dillon

The Jewelled Sèvres has never found much favour in France, and the only name the French have for this decoration—porcelaine ornée d’émaux—is not very distinctive. A transparent, glassy, or sometimes an opaque enamel of very brilliant tint is applied in the form of little beads standing out in relief and set in gold mountings. This application of ‘appliqués gems in chased gold setting,’ unless used with great delicacy and moderation, produces a tawdry and overloaded effect, above all when applied upon coloured grounds. But when these little ‘paste-jewels’ are set upon the soft white of the Sèvres pâte tendre the result is sometimes very pleasing. On a cup and saucer belonging to Mr. Currie, now at South Kensington, the ruby and turquoise jewels are connected by branches of gold overlaid with a transparent green enamel ([Pl. xl].). On the other hand, on a large ewer and basin of turquoise, with a decoration of gold, in the ‘Londonderry Cabinet’ at Hertford House, which has the date-letter for 1768, the original design is capriciously overlaid by a series of jewelled chains which (if we are to trust the date-mark on the ewer) must certainly have been added at a later time. Indeed the manufacture of this jewelled ware seems to have been confined to the years 1780-86.

When a school of painting was first established at Sèvres, it was to the fan-painters and to the miniature-painters in enamel that Bachelier turned for assistance, and we can detect the mannerisms peculiar to these two schools in the decoration of some of the earlier pieces made at Sèvres.

Marks.—By the royal decree of 1753, from which

PLATE XL. JEWELLED SÈVRES

we have already quoted, it was ordered that all pieces should be marked with the well-known royal cipher, the double L, and that a letter-mark indicating the year should be added ([Pl. d]. 56). The single letters of the alphabet carry us from 1753 to 1776; after that double letters were used till 1793, when the king’s initial was replaced by the letters R. F., with the addition of the word Sèvres. A mark of this latter kind was in use till the end of the century, after which time no more soft paste was made.

Each artist marked his work with a monogram or a private sign, often suggested by a play upon the syllables of his name, as in the case of the canting arms of heraldry. For example, ‘2000’ (vingtcents) was adopted by Vincent, the famous gilder; a branch of a tree by Dubois; and, more strangely still, a triangle, the sign of the Trinity, by an artist named Dieu. These marks were placed underneath, or by the side of, the royal cipher. The marks of more than a hundred artists have been identified from the records kept at Sèvres—painters of flowers, garlands, landscapes, marines, genre-subjects, and finally gilders. A complete list of these men, with their marks, may be found in Garnier, Chaffers, and other writers on the subject.

The manufacture of true kaolinic porcelain was begun in 1769, but the soft paste continued to be made for another thirty years, side by side with the new ware. It was not till the year 1804 that it was finally abandoned by Brongniart, the new director. He found the soft-paste ware unsuitable for the big pieces now ordered by the Imperial Government. The paste was difficult to work, the preparation was expensive, and the dust formed both from the paste and from the lead glaze was injurious to the health of the workmen. One or two attempts have since been made at Sèvres to revive the old ware, but they have fallen through in every case.

Brongniart, in 1804, to provide funds for the impoverished works and to pay the arrears of wages to the workmen, threw on the market the large stock of plain white soft paste that had accumulated in the magazine. Now at that time there were in Paris many skilled porcelain painters, some of them ex-employés at Sèvres, and others, men who made a living by painting on the plain ware sent from Limoges and other factories. These ‘chambrelans’ (they painted at home, en chambre, and corresponded to our English ‘chamberers’) were now employed by the dealers who had eagerly bought up the ware that Brongniart had parted with.[193] They painted and gilt this white ware in imitation of the Sèvres porcelain of the best period so successfully that the services they turned out have found their way into royal collections. This ware, in fact, forms a group by itself, quite apart from the later imitations of the pâte tendre, which, in every degree of merit and demerit, are now found in the china-shops of Europe and America. M. Garnier points out three signs by which this pseudo-Sèvres may be recognised: 1. The green prepared from the newly introduced chromium is of a warm yellowish tint, and displays none of the submetallic tints so often to be seen in enamels coloured by copper, as in the famille verte of China. 2. The gold on this bastard ware, burnished with an agate polisher, differs in quality of surface from the old gilding worked au clou. 3. The date-marks and painters’ monograms were copied at hazard from the old pieces—at that time no list of these marks had been made public—so that, for example, the monogram of a gilder may be found on a piece decorated in colours only.