A royal porcelain manufactory

In the eighteenth century European monarchs not only patronized the decorative arts but also owned workshops and factories that produced luxuries that furnished their royal residences and the houses of the nobility. Their patronage was certainly a matter of economics and national pride, but it also set aesthetic standards and established fashion trends. Louis XV of France is a case in point. The Sevres porcelain manufactory had its beginnings near Paris in the town of Vincennes in 1740. There, craftsmen made soft-paste porcelains in a variety of elegant and delicate styles with limited financial success. This changed when the factory was named manufacture du roi in 1753 and became so successful that it was moved to larger quarters in Sevres in 1756, and three years later it was purchased by the king. Concurrently, he and his mistress, the insatiable shopper Madame de Pompadour, stepped up their acquisitions of this fine porcelain.

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Since the eighteenth century, admirers have always regarded Sevres as one of the leading European porcelain manufactories, and pieces with any kind of royal provenance (in France and elsewhere) have always been held in the highest regard. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City has a particularly rich collection of Sevres porcelain, both freestanding objects and plaques set into extraordinary pieces of French furniture by the leading ebenistes of the period (see illustration at right). Some ninety pieces of Sevres drawn from the museum's holdings have been assembled for a special exhibition entitled A Taste for Opulence: Sevres Porcelain from the Collection. While the museum's most important pieces are always on view, they are scattered in various galleries and in the French period rooms, where they may not always be seen to best advantage. This exhibition provides a wonderful opportunity to study these porcelains at close range and grouped together. The show, which is made possible through the generosity of the David Berg Foundation, is on view through August 13, and its curators are Danielle Kisluk-Grosheide and Jeffrey Munger.

In the face of stiff competition elsewhere in Europe, the administrators at Sevres frequently employed the leading artists and designers of the day, and it was the high quality of the painted decoration they achieved that made this porcelain so desirable. Since the factory maintained a fairly consistent system of marking its products and allowed painters and gilders to sign their work, many examples can be documented today through the firm's vast archives. Special commissions, particularly lavish diplomatic gifts from the king, often consisted of large dinner services. These gifts were wonderful publicity for the factory because they were sent to the far corners of Europe, including Russia, where Catherine the Great was the recipient and the donor of a great many pieces of Sevres. The royal gifts were often innovative, an example being a tureen in the museum's collection (see illustration on p. 18) that was part of a service bestowed on Frederick V, the king of Denmark, by Louis XV to thank him for a gift of stallions. It was the first Sevres service to have been painted on a green ground.

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After the death of Louis XV in 1774, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette patronized Sevres in a grand fashion before the monarchy was toppled for just such extravagant expenditures. For example, the king ordered 108 pieces of Sevres for the dairy of the ferme ornee he was building as a surprise for his wife at the Chateau de Rambouillet. The service, in the latest neoclassical style, was to appoint a building known as the laiterie that resembled a working dairy, but was in fact far more elaborate. It was to serve as a pleasure pavilion where a light meal or dessert could be taken in pastoral surroundings. The queen was guillotined before she had the chance to use it.

There is no catalogue of this exhibition.

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