Manufacture Nast - Cup And Saucer With Owl Decor - Empire Period

Cup and saucer in hard porcelain decorated with a frieze of owls or owls in burgundy shades on a pink background with gold lines and gold stars. Signed in gold on the reverse Nast in Paris. 

The Nast factory is a hard porcelain factory founded in 1784 in Paris by Jean Népomucène Hermann Nast, an Austrian emigrant naturalized French. Arriving in 1778 from the Palatinate, Nast took over a porcelain factory in rue Popincourt in 1783. The following year, he transferred it to 70 rue des Amandiers-Popincourt. He inaugurated a new technique for applying gold with a wheel for relief decorations, for which he filed a patent in 1810. He also developed new colors such as chrome green, known as Empire green, created with the chemist Louis- Nicolas Vauquelin, which supports very high cooking temperatures. The Nast factory supplied French high society and several European courts. In 1814, she created one of the oldest porcelain services in the White House. After the death of Jean Népomucène Hermann Nast on March 15, 1817, the company remained in the hands of his two sons Henri Jean and François Jean, associated with their father from 1811. Visiting the 1819 exhibition, King Louis XVIII awarded them his praise: "I see with pleasure the talent pass from father to son, and I urge you to cultivate it".