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Lot Essay
The present ice-pails and covers are from a dessert service described in factory records as fruits ornements en or et animaux peints en brun sur le bord etc. when it entered the salesroom on 13 December 1823 (Registre Vv 1, folio 207, n059). Exhibited in the annual presentation at the Louvre on 1 January 1824 as item 20 under the heading of Table Services, it was sent to the Prince de Polignac, then French ambassador to London, on 30 August 1824 (Registre Vbb 6, folio 24).
The valuation sheet or Feuille d' Appreciation created when the service entered the Sèvres saleroom notes the selling price of the present ice-pails at 650 francs against a manufacturing cost of 591.75 francs. By comparison, plates for the service were priced at 70 francs. The costs involved and names the artists responsible for the specific types of decoration are itemized: gilding by Hillaire-François Boullemier aîné (FB), painting of the animals and rinceaux by Didier (Di), painting of the fruits by Jacobber, and burnishing of the gilding or brunissage à l'effet by Barbin.
The model for the icepail was conceived in 1806 by a member of the Brachard family, a nod to the factory's 18th century vase 'a tête d'elephant' which was itself inspired by a Chinese original. This earlier version is discussed in detail by Rosalind Savill in her catalogue of the Sèvres porcelain in The Wallace Collection, pp. 156-156. See Aileen Dawson, French Porcelain, A Catalogue of the British Museum Collection, London, 1994, pp. 217-220, no. 180 for a discussion of the pair of similar form from the service presented in 1812 by Napoleon I to Emperor Francis II of Austria.
The valuation sheet or Feuille d' Appreciation created when the service entered the Sèvres saleroom notes the selling price of the present ice-pails at 650 francs against a manufacturing cost of 591.75 francs. By comparison, plates for the service were priced at 70 francs. The costs involved and names the artists responsible for the specific types of decoration are itemized: gilding by Hillaire-François Boullemier aîné (FB), painting of the animals and rinceaux by Didier (Di), painting of the fruits by Jacobber, and burnishing of the gilding or brunissage à l'effet by Barbin.
The model for the icepail was conceived in 1806 by a member of the Brachard family, a nod to the factory's 18th century vase 'a tête d'elephant' which was itself inspired by a Chinese original. This earlier version is discussed in detail by Rosalind Savill in her catalogue of the Sèvres porcelain in The Wallace Collection, pp. 156-156. See Aileen Dawson, French Porcelain, A Catalogue of the British Museum Collection, London, 1994, pp. 217-220, no. 180 for a discussion of the pair of similar form from the service presented in 1812 by Napoleon I to Emperor Francis II of Austria.