SECOND QUARTER 18TH CENTURY

A closely related pair of tôle seaux à bouteille are signed François Louis Dorez fecit à lille (sold anonymously at Sotheby's London, 5 July 1985, lot 62). Dorez was a member of a large family of Lille faienciers and moved to Valenciennes to set up a faience workshop in 1737, at which time he was trying to sell a lacquer commode, possibly also of tôle (see John Whitehead, The French Interior in the Eighteenth Century, Singapore, 1992, p.192).

A pair of almost identical seaux a raffraichissoir is in the musée Carnavalet, Paris (illustrated in Collection Henriette Bouvier, Paris, 1968, no. 20).