Édouard Garnier Lithograph of Sèvres Porcelain Vase Garniture Circa 1892

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Édouard Garnier Lithograph of Sèvres Porcelain Vase Garniture
Circa 1892

This chromolithograph reproduces a garniture of three covered Sèvres soft-paste … Read more Édouard Garnier Lithograph of Sèvres Porcelain Vase Garniture
Circa 1892

This chromolithograph reproduces a garniture of three covered Sèvres soft-paste porcelain vases on deep bleu grounds, drawn by Édouard Garnier and printed in colors heightened with gold.

The central vase, the largest of the three, is of ovoid form on a stepped socle foot, reserved at the front with an oval medallion painted with birds perched among branches, within a surround of richly tooled gilt foliate scrollwork, beneath a pearl-beaded domed cover with a gilt ball finial.

The flanking pair, of tapering ovoid form with angular loop handles, are each reserved with an oval medallion painted with a spray of summer flowers hung with gilt husk and laurel swags, above gadrooned lower bodies — that at the right further ornamented with a gilt Greek-key band — and raised on square plinths, beneath domed covers with bud and foliate finials.

The plate is headed “SÈVRES” and set within gilt fillet rules and a marbled border. It is presented in a giltwood frame with a beaded edge and a cream mount with gilt-lined French matting.

The landscape format makes this an easy piece to hang. It sits handsomely above a console, a sideboard, or a low chest, and the deep blue and gold are made for a dining room, a paneled study, or a hall. It also works beautifully in a group, whether with other Garnier plates or with botanical and architectural prints of the same period, run in a row along a stair wall or hung two-over-two above a buffet. The gilt frame and French matting are already done for you, so it goes straight onto the hook.

Dimensions:
Height: 17½ inches (44.5 cm)
Width: 21 inches (53.3 cm)
Depth: ¾ inch (1.9 cm)

Provenance:
Earle D. Vandekar of Knightsbridge, Inc.

Historical Context
The plate comes from Édouard Garnier’s The Soft Porcelain of Sèvres (La Porcelaine tendre de Sèvres), among the earliest scholarly surveys devoted to eighteenth-century French porcelain. Garnier (1840–1903), curator of the Musée céramique at the Sèvres manufactory, prepared fifty watercolors of celebrated soft-paste pieces, which were reproduced as chromolithographs by Charles Gillot’s gillotage process and printed by Maison Quantin in Paris.

Issued in installments from about 1889, the plates appeared in book form in Paris and, with a historical introduction, in the English edition published by John C. Nimmo, London, in 1892; the gilding on each plate was applied in genuine metallic gold. The garniture shown here, with its painted bird and floral reserves and richly tooled gilding on a deep bleu ground, exemplifies the forms and palette for which Vincennes and Sèvres soft-paste porcelain of the 1750s to 1770s was so admired.

Ref: NY11188-ikx See less