Pair Of Pots

Manufacture of Sévres, 19th century

Pair of pots

Porcelain and gilded metal, cm 56

These two vases, in the style of Napoleon III or Second Empire, made of porcelain with the addition of gold metal details, belong to the production of one of the most important French manufactures of the nineteenth century: that of Sèvres. Born in the middle of the XVIII century, in the small village of Sèvres, near Paris, this manufactory specialized in the production of porcelain immediately, meeting the favor of the French court and growing in quality and quantity of objects produced; a sudden halt came because of the Revolution but the manufacture, although in ruins managed to survive and became exclusive property of the French government, passing in the following decades under the different regimes and governments that followed each other and arriving until today, with the Manufacture nationale de Sèvres still active and under the control of the French State. The intense blue of the surface blends perfectly with the golden details of the arms, the base and the plant motifs that form two mistilinee frames in which are depicted two gallant scenes, in which two couples are immersed in a bucolic landscape; Here the porcelain shows all its chromatic variety, with light tones, similar to those of watercolors but even brighter thanks to the reflective surface of the porcelain where stand out the colorful clothes of the characters dressed according to the nineteenth century fashion. The signature that appears in both scenes is that of H. Poitevin, a craftsman who signs and makes many porcelain objects during the second half of the nineteenth century following a modus operandi very similar to what we can see here: From the choice of materials to the subject of framed scenes, through the preference for objects such as vases, cups and ampoules of various shapes.On the bottom of the vases we find the logo of the manufacture, with the two crossed L, or the royal seal, which contain the letter D, used as a dating system in the previous century and here taken together with the two L for the ancient prestige of the past logo.