WFrench porcelain has a history spanning a period from the 17th century to the present. The French were heavily involved in the early European efforts to discover the secrets of making the hard-paste porcelain known from Chinese and Japanese export porcelain. They succeeded in developing soft-paste porcelain, but Meissen porcelain was the first to make true hard-paste, around 1710, and the French took over 50 years to catch up with Meissen and the other German factories.
WChantilly porcelain is French soft-paste porcelain produced between 1730 and 1800 by the manufactory of Chantilly in Oise, France. The wares are usually divided into three periods, 1730-51, 1751-1760, and a gradual decline from 1760 to 1800.
WThe china service of the Lincoln administration generally refers to a set of purple-banded china (porcelain) dishes used for serving and eating food at the White House, home of the President of the United States. Also known as the Lincoln solferino china service, it was purchased in April 1861 by First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln. The porcelain was manufactured by Haviland & Co. in France, and some of the decoration of the china was made overseas. Additional decoration was made by the American firm of E. V. Haughwout & Co., which sold the china to Mrs. Lincoln.
WCiquaire Cirou was a French industrialist and porcelain manufacturer. He was originally a member of the Saint-Cloud manufactory, where he was a painter, specializing in soft-paste porcelain.
WClignancourt porcelain, also "Porcelaine de Monsieur" or Manufacture de Monsieur, was a type of French hard-paste porcelain, bought or established by the architect Pierre Deruelle in 1767. The factory remains at what was then Rue de Clignancourt, Montmartre, Paris; it may have already been in production at that point. In January 1775 it was placed under the protection of Monsieur, the King's brother, and future Louis XVIII. The porcelain was then called Porcelaine de Monsieur. The factory was transferred to Deruelle's son-in-law in 1790, and production had presumably ceased by the time the building was sold in 1791.
WDihl and Guérhard porcelain was made by the Duc d'Angoulême's porcelain factory, a hard-paste porcelain factory in Paris, active from February 25, 1781 until 1828. It was founded by Christophe Dihl (1752-1830) and Antoine Guérhard (d.1793), together with Louise-Françoise-Madeleine Croizé (1751-1831), then married to Guérhard, but married to Dihl from 1797. Dihl was a chemist, and the factory experimented with new colours and finishes.
WEtiolles porcelain was a type of French hard-paste porcelain, that was manufactured in the city of Etiolles, near Corbeil since 1766. The factory was established by Dominique Monnier and Jean-Baptiste Pellevé. Only rare specimens remain.
WHaviland & Co. is a manufacturer of Limoges porcelain in France, begun in the 1840s by the American Haviland family, importers of porcelain to the US, which has always been the main market. Its finest period is generally accepted to be the late 19th century, when it tracked wider artistic styles in innovative designs in porcelain, as well as stoneware and sometimes other ceramics.
WCamille Le Tallec was a French porcelain craftsman and artist.
WEach porcelain decorated by the Atelier Camille Le Tallec in Paris is signed by an LT motif in a Sèvres-like mark. Inside the LT motif appear two series of letters. First, a letter code in the upper part indicating the date of production of the piece, and second the initials of the piece's painter in the lower part. This dating system has been adopted from 1941. Le Tallec's pieces without these marks are likely to be produced between 1930 and 1941. Incrementation of the dating system was done every six-month period from 1941 to 1991, then every year since. By 1978, date of the transfer of the atelier from Belleville to rue de Reuilly in Paris, the date mark starts by R, then the letter. By 1995, corresponding to the new installation at the avenue Daumesnil in Paris, the date mark starts by D then the letter.
WLimoges porcelain is hard-paste porcelain produced by factories in and around the city of Limoges, France beginning in the late 18th century, but does not refer to a particular manufacturer. By about 1830 Limoges, which was close to the areas where suitable clay was found, had replaced Paris as the main centre for private porcelain factories, although the state-owned Sèvres porcelain near Paris remained dominant at the very top of the market. Limoges has maintained this position to the present day.
WThe Londonderry Vase is a hard-paste porcelain vase, standing at 54 inches tall. It is decorated with polychrome enamels, gilding and gilt bronze mounts. It bears the Sèvres mark, two intersecting Ls with a letter in the center denoting its creation year (1813-1815) and a crown over the L's to mark it as hard-paste. The vase was commissioned by Napoleon around 1805 to be created by the Sèvres Manufactory. The vase is currently on display at the Art Institute of Chicago.
WMennecy-Villeroy porcelain is a French soft-paste porcelain from the manufactory established under the patronage of Louis-François-Anne de Neufville, duc de Villeroy (1695-1766) and — from 1748 — housed in outbuildings in the park of his château de Villeroy, and in the nearby village of Mennecy (Île-de-France). The history of the factory remains somewhat unclear, but it is typically regarded as producing between about 1738 and 1765.
WJean-Louis Morin (1732-1787) was a French porcelain painter who worked at the Sèvres Porcelain Manufactory from 1754 to 1787. He was a specialist in figure painting known for his deceptions of military and marine scenes which he painted on useful wares, as well as ornamental and flower vases. Unusually he used his own sketches for the design of the paintings. His artist's signature featured a scrolling upper or lower cased letter M.
WJean Népomucène Hermann Nast (1754–1817) was founder of a porcelain manufacturer that pioneered a process of high relief, multicolored hard-paste porcelain.
WThe manufacture de Nast was a prominent hard-paste porcelain factory founded in Paris in 1783 by Jean Népomucène Hermann Nast, an Austrian born French citizen. Nast porcelain was produced until 1835, and was one of a number of factories making very high-quality porcelain in Paris in this period, such as Dihl and Guérhard. This contrasted with London, where the factories had all closed or removed north by 1775, although the capital remained, like Paris, a centre for decorating plain "blanks" made elsewhere - in France often in Limoges porcelain.
WNiderviller faience is one of the most famous French pottery manufacturers. It has been located in the village of Niderviller, Lorraine, France since 1735. It began as a maker of faïence, and returned to making this after a period in the mid-18th century when it also made hard-paste porcelain. In both materials, it made heavy use of deep magenta or pink in its decoration.
WRouen porcelain is soft-paste porcelain made in the city of Rouen, Normandy, France, during a brief period from about 1673 to 1696. It was the earliest French porcelain, but was probably never made on a commercial basis; only nine pieces are now thought to survive.
WSaint-Cloud porcelain was a type of soft-paste porcelain produced in the French town of Saint-Cloud from the late 17th to the mid 18th century.
WEdmé Samson, founder of the porcelain firm Samson, Edmé et Cie, was a famous copyist of porcelain and pottery. The firm produced high-quality copies or imitations of earlier styles of porcelain, mainly 18th-century European and Chinese and Japanese porcelain, but also earlier styles such as Italian maiolica.
WThe Manufacture nationale de Sèvres is one of the principal European porcelain manufactories. It is located in Sèvres, Hauts-de-Seine, France. It is the continuation of Vincennes porcelain, founded in 1740, which moved to Sèvres in 1756. It has been owned by the French crown or government since 1759, and has always maintained the highest standards of quality. Almost immediately, it replaced Meissen porcelain as the standard-setter among European porcelain factories, retaining this position until at least the 19th century.
WPot pourri à vaisseau or pot pourri en navire is the shape used for a number of pot-pourri vases in the form of masted ships, first produced between the late 1750s to the early 1760s by the Sèvres manufactory near Paris. The colours and details of the painted decoration vary between examples, as is typical of Sèvres porcelain, and one example is on a later gilt wood stand. The openwork lid lifts off to allow refilling of the pot-pourri. The shape was eventually produced in two or three versions, at slightly different sizes. It was first designed in 1757, probably by Jean-Claude Duplessis, the artistic director of the factory. The first surviving finished example dates to 1759. Another name for them is vaisseau à mat.
WSoft-paste porcelain is a type of ceramic material in pottery, usually accepted as a type of porcelain. It is weaker than "true" hard-paste porcelain, and does not require either the high firing temperatures or the special mineral ingredients needed for that. There are many types, using a range of materials. The material originated in the attempts by many European potters to replicate hard-paste Chinese export porcelain, especially in the 18th century, and the best versions match hard-paste in whiteness and translucency, but not in strength. But the look and feel of the material can be highly attractive, and it can take painted decoration very well.
WVase with lid is a 1926 vase by René Crevel. It is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
WThe Vincennes porcelain manufactory was established in 1740 in the disused royal Château de Vincennes, in Vincennes, east of Paris, which was from the start the main market for its wares.