SÈVRES PORCELAIN
There is no continental porcelain better known by name to every one than
the French porcelain of Sèvres. Nevertheless, fewer chance collectors
and lovers of old china appear to know as much about it as they do about
old Worcester, Derby, Chelsea, or Dresden. Over fifty marks for Sèvres,
nearly two hundred and fifty marks of painters, decorators, and gilders
of the Sèvres manufactory, as well as over thirty-five of the marks of
some of the modelers are known. The principal marks of fabrication from
1753 to the present number some thirty-five. From this it will be seen
that Sèvres forms a group in the history of ceramic art that requires
some study to master its _minutiæ_ and the _indicia_ that will enable
the collector to pass intelligent judgment on pieces that come to his
notice. While it is true that the collecting of Sèvres can hardly be a
“poor man’s hobby,” it also is true that knowing something about even a
single piece in one’s general collection of old china, or of less
specialized antiques and curios, justifies giving attention to the
ramifications of the particular phase of the subject that may, for the
moment, more definitely apply to the piece in hand. Thus if one
possesses a bit of modern Sèvres of fine quality, the interest of that
possession cannot but be intensified by a knowledge of earlier examples
of the fabrique to which it is allied.
Fatal improvements have often marked the progress of the arts. It was so
with that of the Royal Porcelain of Sèvres. The early pieces were of
soft paste, but in 1804 the director, Monsieur Brogniart, was so pleased
with the introduction of the hard paste instead that he utterly banished
the soft paste, going so far as to destroy the secret formula for its
making, and burying alive, as one might say, all the soft-paste material
then on hand in the Parc de Versailles! Poor, deluded mortal! Probably
he died unaware of having murdered the Sèvres porcelain of the finest
type! Thus one begins to understand why the examples of the pâte tendre
of the year 1753 through to the change for the hard pâte are so rare and
so highly prized.
By old Sèvres we comprehend the pieces made from 1753 to 1804. This is
the true _vieux Sèvres_. From 1753 to 1777 inclusive the letters of the
alphabet, singly, from A to Z, (W omitted), indicate the years of
manufacture. The year letters were placed between the two script L’s
(one reversed). The letters A, B, and C indicate the pieces made at
Vincennes (the original site of the manufactory) in 1753, 1754, and 1755
respectively, while the year of the removal of the manufactory to
Sèvres, near St. Cloud, 1756, is indicated by the letter D between the
double L’s. The L’s, of course, stood for the royal cipher of Louis XV,
the first year, and then of Louis XVI of France from 1754 to September,
1792, when the French Republic was proclaimed and R.F. in monogram or in
capital letters took its place.
In the study of any porcelain pieces the _amateur_ should acquaint
himself with the difference between soft and hard porcelain of any sort.
The eighteenth-century porcelain has a soft, velvety “feel,” the glaze
not being so glassy as that of hard porcelain. A pen-knife can cause
abrasion on soft-paste porcelain, while hard paste will nearly always
repel even the pressure of a steel point drawn over it. With soft paste
one can see through the glaze, as it were; with hard paste one cannot.
The enamel of the soft paste of Sèvres presents a delicate, milky glaze,
exquisitely distinctive. The colors, too, show forth with velvety
freshness. _Bleu du roi_--king’s blue--is the name given the cobalt blue
of the decoration; _turquoise_ designates the sky-blue which dates from
1752, when Helbot first compounded it; _rose Pompadour_ and _rose
Dubarry_ are the names given the reds during the domination of those
court favorites; _violet pensée_, the name for the pansy color; _jaune
clair_, the name for the pale yellow (_jonquille_ was as often used);
_vert pomme_ and _vert jaune_ designated the apple-green, while _vert
anglais_ and _vert pré_ was applied to the color we term grass-green.
There is also a velvety “feel” about the unenameled portions of
porcelain, owing to its fine texture, which distinguishes it from hard
porcelain. Looked at obliquely against the light so that a portion of
the white surface and a portion of the painted surface equally receive a
beam, there appear no differences in surfaces. With a soft porcelain the
enamel seems so to incorporate with the soft paste as to present a
surface of identical substance. Hard porcelain will exhibit a distinct
difference in the lustre of the white surface and in the colored glazed
surface. The color surface will invariably appear less brilliant.
In Sèvres porcelain of the first period the white ground predominates.
The flowers and wreathes, etc., are delicately scattered over but do not
crowd the white field. In later pieces the decorations came by degree to
be the more assertive. Likewise, more gilding was employed. After 1770
portraits came into the decoration, and the designs of the Louis Quinze
and those of the Louis Quatorze periods were superseded by designs which
followed more along Egyptian and Etruscan lines. With the soft porcelain
of Sèvres very large pieces could not be produced, but of the later
hard-paste porcelain huge vases were often fabricated, marvels indeed of
ceramic skill, though seldom as artistic and perfect in technical
qualities.
The bisque statuettes of early Sèvres eagerly sought by museums and
collectors are one of the interesting phases of this manufacture, though
these objects scarcely can be said to approach those of Saxony. Their
manufacture at Sèvres was almost given up after 1777. We have, however,
from our own day, the much-treasured statuettes modeled for Sèvres by
modern sculptors, among whom was the late Auguste Rodin.
From 1778 to 1792, inclusive, the year mark was indicated by the double
letters AA to OO, within the interlaced L’s. During the period of the
First Republic (1792-1804) the mark was, first, the interlaced F.R. (for
_République Française_), then the letters R.F. with the word “Sèvres”
below (“Sèvres” being written with or without the accent mark), or just
the word “Sèvres,” and finally in the Consular period of this epoch
“MNle” over the word “Sèvres” (from 1803-1804). The years IX (1801),
X (1802), and XI (1803) were designated by “T^{9},” “X,” and “II” in
addition.
The mark of the first imperial epoch (1804-1814) was “M. Imple” over
“de Sèvres,” two ornamental strokes below without accent mark, and then,
later, the imperial eagle crowned with the legend, “_Manufacture
Imperiale. Sevres_,” without accent mark (1810). The years XII (1804),
XIII (1805) and XIV (1806) were marked by distinguishing symbols (1804
by two horizontal dashes, a dot above and one below; 1805 by two short
lines aslant, a horizontal dash to the left and one to the right; the
year 1806 by a mark resembling the prong of a trident, point upward).
The Sèvres marks of the second royal epoch consisted of the restored
interlaced L’s of Louis XVIII and the fleur-de-lys between (1814-1823);
of the interlaced C’s of Charles X, with the X between, or the
fleur-de-lys or without (1824-1829); of just the fleur-de-lys (August
30th to December, 1830) and other marks in circles (1831-1834) and the
cipher L.P. of Louis Philippe (1834-1848).
With the advent of the second republican epoch, 1848-1851, the “R.F.”
was restored, only to be displaced by the imperial eagle (1852) with the
letter S to left and “52” to the right of the eagle, and the crowned N
of 1854 of the second imperial epoch (1852-1872), with the letter S to
left and the year numeral to right of the N. The Third Republic brought
back the “R.F.” again, followed by other marks, the one introduced in
1888 showing a potter at work, the whole within a double circle bearing
the legend _Nationale Sèvres Manufacture_. From 1817 date marks were
designated by the last two numerals of the year number only, as the date
1807, 1808, 1809, and 1810 had been designated by 7, 8, 9, and 10. The
years 1811 to 1817, inclusive, had been designated by the small letters
o.z, d.z, t.z, q.z, q.n, s.z, and d.s, standing, respectively, for the
French _onze_, _douze_, _treize_, _quatorze_, _quize_, _seize_, and
_dix-sept_.
The output of the Sèvres works in recent years has been very small, that
institution having become a place for the education and training of
French potters who will carry on the Sèvres traditions in other lines
of their work. Such examples as are being made to-day take the form of
presentation sets of ware especially designed and made as a gift to a
potentate, a diplomat, or as a token of the French Government’s regard
on such occasions as the marriage of a princess or a president’s
daughter. Various quantities of it have been brought to this country at
the time of expositions, and much of that has passed into the hands of
the American collectors. It is still possible to pick up here and there
good pieces that are genuine and thoroughly worth while.
Notwithstanding the advanced collector’s greater eagerness to collect
Sèvres of the pâte-tendre period, later Sèvres is an alluring,
interesting, entertaining, and possible field for the collector to enter
without discouragement, and the pieces of this later fabrique well
deserve a place in the cabinet or as a decorative feature in the home of
good taste.