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Pre-Lot Text
THE PROPERTY OF A LADY
(LOTS 186 - 190)
THE 'POMPADOUR' PATTERN
Two enamelled services and a blue and white service with this pattern are known. These have traditionally been thought to have been made for Madame de Pompadour (1721-64) based on the fish vignettes, which appear to related to her maiden name of Poisson (fish), and the eagle vignettes representing her husband, King Louis XV. However, there is no evidence that this is so, and indeed it is thought unlikely that Madame de Pompadour would have drawn attention to her bourgeois family name in this way. See Louis Mézin, Cargoes from China, Porcelain from the Compagnie des Indes in the Musée de Lorient, Lorient, 2004, exhibition catalogue, p. 65 for a further discussion on these services, where the author explains that no mention of such services was discovered in any of the family inventories; see also ibid. no. 44 for a deep dish included in the exhibition, which is very similar to the one in Lot 190 in the current sale. For an example of each of the two enamelled services, see David S. Howard, Choice of the Private Trader, London, 1994: no. 271, p. 229, for a bourdaloue of the famille rose service primarily in shades of blue, red and green enamels, and no. 77, p. 89, for a saucer-shaped dish in the palette which is primarily iron-red and green enamels combined with gilt; both pieces are in the Hodroff Collection. See also Howard and Ayers, China for the West, vol. II, London and New York, 1978, p. 443, for a further discussion on the pattern, and no. 449, for a plate from the Mottahedeh Collection.
The palettes used in both the enamelled services were particularly popular in France during this time, suggesting that it was a French order, and judging by the extensive range of rare and lavish forms in addition to those normally found in services, they were probably private orders of considerable importance for persons of considerable wealth. Examples from the services are in the Musée Guimet, Paris, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Bordeaux, the Musée de Saint-Omer (from the Dupuis Bequest), and the Musée Grobet Labadit, Marseilles.