The factory, which
had been founded in the town of Vincennes in 1740 and then
reestablished in larger quarters at Sèvres in 1756, became the
preeminent porcelain manufacturer in Europe in the second half of the
eighteenth century. Louis XV had been an early investor in the
fledgling ceramic enterprise and became itssole owner in 1759.
However, due to the upheavals of the French Revolution, its financial
position at the beginning of the nineteenth century was extremely
precarious. No longer a royal enterprise, the factory also had lost
much of its clientele, and its funding reflected the ruinous state of
the French economy.
However, the
appointment in 1800 of Alexandre Brongniart (1770–1847) as the
administrator of the factory marked a profound shift in its fortunes.
Trained as both an engineer and a scientist, Brongniart was both
brilliant and immensely capable, and he brought all of his prodigious
talents to the running of the troubled porcelain factory. He directed
the Sèvres factory as administrator until his death in 1847, and
during those five decades influenced every aspect of its organization
and production. Much of the factory’s old, undecorated stock was
immediately sold off, and new forms—largely in the fashionable,
more severe Neoclassical style—were designed to replace out-of-date
models. The composition for hard-paste porcelain was improved, and
the production of soft paste, for which the factory had been famous
in the previous century, was abandoned in 1804. New enamels colors
were devised, and Brongniart oversaw the development of a new type of
kiln that was both more efficient and cost-effective.
Much of the
factory’s output during Brongniart’s first decade reflected the
prevailing Empire taste, which favored extensive gilding, rich border
designs, and elaborate figural scenes .
Backgrounds
simulating marble or a variety of hardstones were employed with
greater frequency ; the new range of enamel colors developed under
Brongniart made it easier to achieve these imitation surfaces, and it
is thought that his interest in mineralogy provided the impetus for
this type of decoration.
For objects produced
in sets, such as dinner, tea, and coffee services, and even
garnitures of vases, Brongniart preferred decorative schemes that
linked the objects in terms of subject matter as well as
stylistically. Dinner services were given coherence by the use of an
overall theme, in addition to shared border patterns and ground
colors. One of the best examples of this can be found in the “Service
des Départements,” which was conceived by Brongniart in 1824 .
Each of the plates in the service was decorated with a famous
topographical view of the département (administrative unit) of
France that it represented, and its border was painted with small
cameo portraits of figures from the region, as well as symbols of the
major arts, industries, and products of the area. This same type of
thematic unity is found on a coffee service produced in 1836 . All of
the pieces of the service are decorated with scenes depicting the
cultivation of cacao, from which chocolate is made, or various stages
in the preparation of chocolate as a beverage. The compositions were
conceived and executed by Jean-Charles Develly, a painter at Sèvres
who was responsible for many of the most ambitious dinner services
produced at the factory during Brongniart’s tenure.
The range of objects
produced in the first half of the nineteenth century was enormous, as
were the types of decoration that they employed. A recent exhibition
catalogue devoted to Brongniart’s years at Sèvres indicates that
ninety-two new designs for vases were introduced, as were eighty-nine
different cup models, and the types of objects produced by the
factory included every sort of form required by a dinner or dessert
service, coffee and tea wares, decorative objects such as vases, and
functional objects such as water jugs, basins, and toiletry articles." (…)
in “Sèvres
Porcelain in the Nineteenth Century” / Jeffrey Munger
Department of
European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, The Metropolitan Museum of
Art
October 2004
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