CIRCA 1788, BLUE INTERLACED L'S MARKS, TWELVE WITH DATE LETTERS LL, ONE EXAMPLE WITH GILT MARKS ANOTHER WITH PURPLE MARKS, SOME WITH INCISED LETTERS AND NUMERALS, PAINTER'S MARKS FOR MADAME BUNEL, MADAME LE BEL, VIELLIARD FILS, MADAME NOUALHIER AND ALSO PROBABLY FOR HER DAUGHTER ANTOINETTE-MARIE-ANNE LE NOUALHIER (LATER MADAME WEYDINGER)

This group of plates would seem most likely to have formed part of the 'Zone Jonquilles Volubilis' service purchased on 22 September 1788 by Madame Hubaire (probably Mme. Huber), resident in Paris. See David Peters, Sèvres Plates and Services of the 18th Century, Little Berkhamstead, 2005, Vol. IV, p. 867-8, service no.88-15, for a full listing of the service in the Sales Registers and references to components of the service in the Artists' Ledgers and Kiln books. Peters confirms that the service is mentioned in a letter of 21 March 1788 from or on behalf of the buyer, identified as Mme. Huber and with an address stated to be 'hotel de trois Evéché, rue de filles St. Thomas' (Paris). The letter requests that the service should 'be finished as soon as possible and that it should preferably be like that supplied to Eden'. In view of the Sales Registers description of the decoration of the service, the earlier service to which Mme. Huber was referring was evidently that produced in 1787 and purchased by William Eden, a British special envoy, on 7th August 1787 for George Rose and with decoration similarly described as 'Zone jonquille peint en Volubilis'. Peters concludes that presumably Mme. Huber must have at some point seen the Eden service and liked it enough to want to order one very similar. A plate from the Rose service bearing date letters KK for 1787 was sold at Christie's, New York, 21 October 2004, lot 960, and another from the Elizabeth Parke Firestone Collection Part I was also sold at Christie's, New York, March 21-22 1991, lot 289. A 1788 plate (probably from the Mme. Huber service) by Mme. Noualhier is in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris (A22095).