Items Similar to Sèvres Porcelain Garniture, Mounted in Gilt Bronze by Picard

Antique Gilt Bronze Mounted Sèvres Porcelain Garniture

Pair of Gilt-Bronze Mounted Sèvres Porcelain Lamp Bases by Picard

Late 19th Century Gilt Bronze Mounted Sèvres Style Porcelain Garniture

Gilt Bronze and Sèvres Style Porcelain Clock Garniture

Pair of Gilt Bronze Mounted Porcelain Vases in Manner of Sèvres

Sèvres Style Porcelain and Gilt Bronze Jardiniere and Vase Garniture

Want more images or videos?

Request additional images or videos from the seller

1 of 8

Sèvres Porcelain Garniture, Mounted in Gilt Bronze by Picard

About the Item

With its delightful painted representations of the four seasons and bacchanalian scenes, this ‘bleu celeste’ garniture demonstrates the technical excellence of Sevres factory porcelain. On top of this, the porcelain vases are beautifully decorated with gilt bronze (ormolu) mounts, expertly cast by Henri Picard, the manufacturer and gilder to Emperor Napoleon III. This garniture is comprised of a central jardinière and a pair of flanking vases. The jardinière features a wide porcelain body, which is topped by a gilt bronze guilloche-patterned neck. This is fitted with two geometric handles, which terminate in cherubs masks. The jardinière body is finely decorated with a continuous painting of putti playing together in a woodland setting. One putti holds the pinecone-tipped staff carried by followers of Bacchus (or Dionysus), the god of wine and ecstasy. Several putti ride on a goat, led on a harness by other putti. This painting is edged with jewelled and parcel gilt decoration, set against a bright ‘bleu celeste’ ground. The jardinière stands on a shaped gilt bronze stem, its top encircled by a band of stiff leaves, its middle by a laurel wreath, and its foot by beading. The jardinière is placed on a square gilt bronze plinth, which is decorated with grape-form finials, hung draperies and foliate motifs, and is set on four beaded toupie feet. The pair of vases are similar to the jardinière in their design. They feature ovoid ‘bleu celeste’ porcelain bodies, which are decorated with continuous paintings of the four seasons, within gilt and jewelled frames. Winter is depicted in a scene showing putti huddled together on a sleigh in a snowy landscape, and autumn by cherubs reaping crops with a sickle. Spring is shown by cherubs wearing flower wreaths and dancing while holding garlands, and summer by putti picking grapes and drinking wine. The vases’ bodies are topped by pointed gilt and jewelled ‘bleu celeste’ porcelain lids, crowned by gilt bronze grape finials. Like the jardinière, the vases are fitted with gilt bronze cherub head handles and stems, and they are set on plinths, raised up on toupie feet. The gilt bronze bases of both the jardinière and pair of vases are signed ‘H. Picard’. Measures: Jardinière- Height 35cm, width 34cm, depth 28cm Pair of vases- Height 46cm, width 22cm, depth 16cm.

Creator:

Henri Picard (Metalworker),Manufacture Nationale de Sèvres (Manufacturer)

Dimensions:

Height: 13.78 in (35 cm)Width: 13.39 in (34 cm)Depth: 11.03 in (28 cm)

Sold As:

Set of 3

Style:

Louis XV (In the Style Of)

Materials and Techniques:

Bronze,Ormolu,Porcelain,Gilt

Place of Origin:

France

Period:

Late 19th Century

Date of Manufacture:

Late 19th Century

Condition:

Seller Location:

London, GB

Reference Number:

Seller: 159641stDibs: LU956314355842

View Invoice

Shop All Manufacture Nationale de Sèvres

Manufacture Nationale de Sèvres

A maker of exemplary European ceramics for hundreds of years, Manufacture Nationale de Sèvres has produced porcelain of the highest quality since 1740.

The factory enjoyed royal patronage from its earliest days, and its most prominent patrons in the late 1700s — King Louis XV of France and his mistress, Madame de Pompadour — commissioned some of the period’s most elegant and striking pieces (only the truly wealthy could afford porcelain at this time). The company was originally established in Vincennes but was moved at the request of Madame de Pompadour, in 1756, to Sèvres, near Versailles, so that its operations would be closer to her château.

Sèvres became a mighty and much-revered factory working under a special grant from King Louis XV — the company’s owner as of 1759 and whose abundance of orders for special state gifts put financial strain on the company. Madame de Pompadour is said to have commissioned Sèvres to create an entire indoor garden of porcelain botanicals, for example.

While Sèvres gained a sterling reputation for its soft-paste porcelain wares, the company was late in entering into the production of hard-paste porcelain.

Hard-paste porcelain is the most common type of Chinese porcelain, then a widely exported and profitable product that was not made in Europe until the 18th century. The resources at Sèvres were largely relegated to meeting the demands of Louis XV, and secondly, it did not acquire the secret formula for hard-paste porcelain until 1761. Until it obtained the coveted secrets behind hard-paste porcelain from a chemist named Pierre-Antoine Hannong — and, years later, gained access to the elusive raw materials to make hard-paste porcelain — Sèvres produced soft-paste porcelain for decades that was widely celebrated but is comparatively a far weaker type as opposed to the hard-paste productions of the company’s rival, Meissen, in Saxony, the first to produce true porcelain outside of Asia.

The artisans at Sèvres applied the rarest and most difficult-to-produce colors to their decorative objects and dinner services. One such color, the bright bleu de roi, became the manufacturer’s signature shade and is found on many of their objects. Sèvres also experimented with rarely glazed or unglazed works that bore no decoration at all — bisque porcelain, French for “biscuit,” refers to unadorned white porcelain sculptures made at Sèvres that resemble white marble after being kiln-fired.

Sèvres marks were applied over the glaze or rendered with cuts by a sharp tool — authentic Sèvres porcelain is most commonly marked with two interlaced Ls that are painted in blue and enclose a third letter. Painters and potters were tasked with affixing marks to record their role in the creation of a particular piece, and as a lot of these artisans’ names are recorded in archival factory materials — and there is also much to be learned at the Sèvres museum — it’s likely that you can accurately identify your Sèvres piece.

Find antique and vintage Manufacture Nationale de Sèvres vases, urns, sculptures and more on 1stDibs.