A VINCENNES EWER AND BASIN (pot à la Romaine à ornements et jatte), after a design by Jean-Claude Duplessis, the pear-shaped jug with gilt and blue rocaille scrolls suspending swags and garlands of garden flowers, a garland of gilt foliage and flowers beneath the lip, the foliage moulded loop handle moulded with bulrushes and gilt foliage at the lower terminal on a lobed quatrefoil foot, the shaped quatrefoil basin similarly moulded and painted with a central blue wreath tied with gilt ribbon and with trailing garden flowers flanked by three scattered flower-sprays, a fly and a moth (minute rubbing to gilding round foot of ewer, the basin with two underside rim chips at one end, minute blemishes to gilt rim), faint blue interlaced L mark to ewer enclosing a dot, blue interlaced L mark to basin enclosing a dot and a dot above and below, incised script gp and ·D·P· to ewer, circa 1752

The Property of the late MRS. CHARLES STEUART Sold by order of the Executor

Details

A VINCENNES EWER AND BASIN (pot à la Romaine à ornements et jatte), after a design by Jean-Claude Duplessis, the pear-shaped jug with gilt and blue rocaille scrolls suspending swags and garlands of garden flowers, a garland of gilt foliage and flowers beneath the lip, the foliage moulded loop handle moulded with bulrushes and gilt foliage at the lower terminal on a lobed quatrefoil foot, the shaped quatrefoil basin similarly moulded and painted with a central blue wreath tied with gilt ribbon and with trailing garden flowers flanked by three scattered flower-sprays, a fly and a moth (minute rubbing to gilding round foot of ewer, the basin with two underside rim chips at one end, minute blemishes to gilt rim), faint blue interlaced L mark to ewer enclosing a dot, blue interlaced L mark to basin enclosing a dot and a dot above and below, incised script gp and ·D·P· to ewer, circa 1752
the jug 24.5cm. high
the basin 37cm. wide (2)

Lot Essay

Cf. Tamara Préaud, Antoine d'Albis, La Porcelaine de Vincennes, p. 128, no. 55 for a green and purple ground example dated 1753. The date of conception of this shape by Duplessis is known by a letter from Hendrick van Hulst to Boileau, 26 October 1751 "...je n'ai nulle idée de la forme que le petit croquis indique des pots à la romaine de M. du Plessis..." In the list of moulds contained in the stock list of October 1752, the moulds for this shape were valued at 10 livres, in comparision with other moulds this was a very high price. Ewers and basins in biscuit were valued at 27 livres and decorated they sold for prices ranging from 144 to 480 livres. A very similar example was in the collection of the Marquis de Vogué illustrated by Garnier, La Porcelaine tendre de Sèvres, Paris 1889, pl. 4 and another sold Sotheby's, 12 June 1984, lot 169. See also Svend Eriksen and Geoffrey de Bellaigue, Sèvres Porcelain, no. 98a & b for a bleu celeste example in the Röhsska Museum Gotenburg and Svend Eriksen, Sèvres Porcelain in the James A. de Rothschild Collection at Waddesdon Manor, no. 10 for another bleu celeste example

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