1763, BLUE INTERLACED L MARKS ENCLOSING DATE LETTER K FOR 1763, PAINTER'S MARK K FOR CHARLES-NICOLAS DODIN

The present pair of Sèvres bleu nouveau bulb-pots, known as piédestaux à oignons, is among a very small number of pieces decorated with rare chinoiserie scenes by the foremost painter at Sèvres, Charles-Nicholas Dodin (1734-1803), who decorated pieces in this distinctive style for a very short time, between 1760 and 1763. They probably formed part of an important vase garniture together with a pair of vases hollandois nouveaux, preserved at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, and a pair of vases à dauphins at Firle Place, Sussex, each of corresponding date, bleu nouveau ground colour and decorated by Dodin with panels of Chinese figures and flowers. This important group of six vases and bulb-pots possibly formed part of a seven-piece garniture acquired from the factory in 1763 by the renowned Paris marchand-mercier, Simon-Philippe Poirier (c. 1720-85).

Piédestal à oignon
Piédestaux of this form were intended for growing and displaying flower bulbs indoors and perhaps for displaying cut flowers when bulbs were out of season, a fashion which originated in the 17th century, but which gained ground in the 18th century with the burgeoning interest in gardening and botany. Flowers became an integral part of interior decoration in the homes of the wealthy elite and in response to this trend the Sèvres factory began to create vases in an ever increasing number of shapes. Most of the new forms, including these bulb-pots, were designed by Jean-Claude Duplessis, père (c. 1695-1774), the innovative designer, gilt-bronze worker, goldsmith and sculptor who was brought in as directeur artistique in 1748, to supervise the modelling workshops at Vincennes. He created several shapes specifically for growing plants and bulbs in earth or water. In the case of piédestal à oignon form, the pedestal-shaped pot would have been filled with water and a bulb, such as a hyacinth, would have been placed in the pierced liner on the top, through which its roots could draw water.

The archives at Sèvres generally refer to this bulb-pot form as ‘pied d’estal’ (or ‘pieds d’esteaux’). However, it is specified once, in the Sales Registers for 1763, as 'piédestal à oignon'.¹ Produced in one size, the shape was introduced in 1756 and was still recorded in 1773, although in small numbers. Other pots made at the factory for single bulbs include the caraffe à oignon and the piédestal en gaine.²

Dodin and chinoiserie decoration
Bulb-pots of this form are rare and furthermore no other piédestaux with chinoiserie decoration by Charles-Nicolas Dodin are known. They belong to small extant group of twenty-nine pieces (including our pair) with Chinese-inspired scenes by the artist, either identified by his painter’s mark of a ‘K’ or attributed to him on stylistic grounds, and executed between 1760 and 1763.³ Of this group, five pieces were delivered to Louis XV and fifteen to Madame de Pompadour, indicating their significance in the Sèvres decorative repertoire and their appeal to the French Court and the uppermost echelons of society. Dodin was one of the most talented and revered painters at the Vincennes factory and then Sèvres, his career spanning forty-nine years from 1754 until 1803. His technique was unrivalled and he worked on many of the factory’s most important productions. He specialised in figure painting and was especially renowned for his draughtsmanship, subtle palette, shading and richness of detail in his compositions. His diverse subjects were inspired by a broad range of sources and he was probably one of the only painters to work directly from original paintings rather than engravings.⁴

'Chinoiserie' began to appear in European art and decoration in the mid-to-late 17th century but gained popularity in the 18th century, inspired by fanciful descriptions of China or from goods imported to Europe since the Middle Ages. In the 1760s, Dodin appears to have been the only artist to specialise in this distinctive chinoiserie style at Sèvres, as seen on this small group of objects depicting scenes of courtly leisure and distinguished by a bright famille rose-type palette and outlining of the figures in black, which recollect Chinese woodblock prints, porcelains and Canton enamels. However, on some pieces in this group, and indeed on one of our bulb-pots, a more direct source can be identified, where Dodin has turned to French adaptations of these Chinese sources, in the form of engravings. The scene on one of our bulb-pots, with a figure of a child tugging at his mother’s robes, was adapted from an etching by Gabriel Huquier, l’aîné (1695-1772), after François Boucher (1703-70), from a series entitled Scènes de la vie Chinoise. Juliet Carey argues that while Boucher ‘refined and recombined elements from Western prints into fashionably updated chinoiseries’, he also ‘assimilated authentic Chinese imagery for French markets’.⁵ This is evident on our bulb-pot where the woman and child comes from – via Huquier’s etching after Boucher – a wood block print in a Chinese account of silk and rice production, the Yuzhi genzhi tu (originally published in Beijing in 1696), which was widely admired in the West. With his use of black outlines and a distinctive, bold palette, Dodin appears to emphasise the Chinese origins of the scene, while slightly adapting the scene from the print source. Also of note are the boldly painted chinoiserie flowers, known as 'fleurs d’Indes', on three sides of each bulb-pot, whose loose arrangements, angular stems and large blooms are reminiscent of flower decoration on oriental porcelains and may have been executed by Louis-Jean Thévenet.⁶

The garniture
These piédestaux were often included in garnitures, which were made up of several vase shapes of varying sizes. In this instance, our vases are identical in date (bearing date letter ‘K’ for 1763), in painter (bearing painter’s mark ‘K’ for Dodin), and in decoration, with chinoiserie scenes and 'fleurs d’Indes' on fond bleu nouveau with gilt dotted circle motifs, to a pair of vases hollandois nouveaux, today in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (museum no. BK-17510-A,B) and a pair of vases à dauphins, known as the ‘Firle vases’, Firle Place in East Sussex.⁷ This group with matching decoration has not been identified in the Sales Registers, indeed, the only mention of piédestaux ‘à oignons’ in the Sèvres archives appears in the Sales Registers for 30 March 1763: a pair with mozaïque decoration, sold for 120 livres as part of a delivery to Lemaitre, probably a dealer, together with a pair of caisses carré (for 96 livres each) and a vase hollandois (for 156 livres), to form a six-vase garniture.

However, it is likely that bulb-pots of this form were not always clearly specified in the factory records and fell into the category of 'vases’ or ‘pieces d’ornements', delivered in larger quantity in 1763 with variable price tags to the King and also to the marchands-merciers and especially Simon-Philippe Poirier. Through his in-depth knowledge of the price structure employed at Sèvres, David Peters has helped confirm that a sale to Poirier of just such a group, listed in the Sales Registers under dealer returns between October 1763 and January 1764, and itemised as follows, may well refer to our vases and the previously mentioned vases at the Rijksmuseum and Firle Place:⁸

Poirier:
2 at 198 livres each [these possibly the present pair of vases piédestaux ‘à oignons’],
2 at 288 livres each [these possibly the pair of vases Hollandois nouveaux from the collection of John Cockshut, sold Christie’s, London, 11 March 1913, lot 64, and now in the collection of the Rijksmuseum, BK-17510-A,B],
2 at 432 livres each [these possibly the pair of vases à dauphins at Firle Place, East Sussex, possibly acquired by the 1st Viscount Melbourne prior to his death in 1828],
2 at 528 livres each,
1 at 600 livres [possibly the unknown central vase that would have formed a garniture with the three pairs vases in graduated size in the same order],
1 at 720 livres

This interpretation of the Sales Registers is speculative, and one may never be able to confirm with absolute certainty that the Poirier purchase refers to this distinctive group of flower vases of variant form and graduated size, each with the same date letter for 1763, the same painter’s mark for Charles-Nicolas Dodin, the same bleu nouveau ground embellished with gilt pointillé circlets, similar chinoiserie scenes, similar flowers, and with the same tooling pattern enriching the gilt ribbons surrounding the painted scenes. But this level of sameness will not have been arbitrary, particularly given the factory’s tradition of using subtle differences in gilding patterns to help differentiate between vases and services that at first glance appear identical. Rather, it points strongly in favour of the six vases having been conceived to form a seven-vase garniture along with a larger (more expensive) single vase made at the same time.

Whether delivered on their own or as part of a garniture, the bulb-pots in the present lot represent a unique example of the fashion for bringing horticulture into the 18^th century interior and reveal Dodin’s nuanced and complex interpretation of the chinoiserie style, inspired by several sources, and pivotal to establishing Sèvres as one of the most innovative and successful porcelain factories in Europe.

1. Cité de la Céramique, Archives de la manufacture nationale de Sèvres, Sales Registers, 30 March 1763, Vy 3, fol.122v.

2. For a pair of bulb-pots of the same form as the present lot in the Wallace Collection, London, and further discussion of the form and references to examples in the archives at Sèvres see Rosalind Savill, The Wallace Collection, Catalogue of Sèvres Porcelain, London, 1988, Vol. 1, pp. 106-109, cat. no. C230-1.

3. For a full discussion and illustrations of pieces from the Dodin chinoiserie group in European and American museum collections, see Marie-Laure de Rochebrune, Splendeur de la Peinture sur Porcelaine au XVIIIe Siècle, Charles-Nicolas Dodin et la Manufacture de Vincennes-Sèvres, exhibition catalogue, Paris, 2012, pp. 78-99.

4. For a detailed analysis of Dodin’s career at Sèvres see Savill, op.cit., Vol. 3, London, 1988, pp. 1029-1032.

5. See Juliet Carey, ‘The Getty Museum’s ‘Dudley Vases’ and Sèvres Chinoiseries’, The French Porcelain Society Journal, Vol. IX, 2022, pp. 243-277.

6. A five-piece petit verd clock garniture from the Dodin group, bought by Madame de Pompadour in 1762, with chinoiserie flowers by Thévenet is illustrated by Rosalind Savill, Everyday Rococo, Madame de Pompadour and Sèvres Porcelain, Norwich, 2022, Vol. 2, pp. 971-973, figs.19.12, 19.13 and 19.14. The clock and the pair of vases pot pourri à bobèches are now in the Musée du Louvre, Paris, and the pair of vases pot pourri feuilles de mirte are now in the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore.

7. See Deborah Gage, ‘Sir Francis Watson at Firle Place, East Sussex’, Metropolitan Museum Journal, Vol. 37, 2002, pp. 239-246, the vases illustrated, pp. 240-241, figs. 1, 2.

8. Cité de la Céramique, Archives de la manufacture nationale de Sèvres, Vy3, fol.156.