With the factory mark in blue and the painter’s mark of a line. Four blue dots in a line for gilding by Pierre-Théodore Buteux (known as ‘Théodore’ active at Sèvres 1765-80). With the gilded mark # for the gilder Michel-Barnabé Chauvaux (active at Vincennes and Sèvres 1752-88). Incised JR and oag

During the first half of 1774 the Parisian dealer M. Dumoulin purchased a dinner service from the Sèvres factory with this pink ground and flower decoration. The service, which had 36 plates costing 33 livres each also had 24 tasses à glaces costing 18 livres each and a pair of plateaux Bouret on which to serve 12 each costing 48 livres per tray.

The service is next recorded when sold at Christie’s in London in 1860 by which time it included only 21 of these ice cups. We often see across the 19th and 20th century how pieces were lost to damage when seeing lists of services at large intervals of time.

John Angerstein (1773-1858) from whose collection this was sold after his death in 1860, was the son of John Julius Angerstein (1732-1823) who was a great collector. The latter had been a successful businessman and was rumored to be an illegitimate son of Empress Anna of Russia. His collection of old master paintings was purchased by the government to form the core of the National Gallery in London. It is possible that he also had the finest furniture and porcelain making purchases in the 18th century.

Many pieces of this dinner service are now in museum collections including the Victoria & Albert Museum, London (including two double salts); the Huntingdon Art Gallery, San Marino, California; the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut; the Hillwood Museum, Washington DC; the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris; the Petit Palais, Paris; the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia.

Amongst the group of Dumoulin Service pieces in the Marjorie Merriweather Post collection at the Hillwood Museum there are six tasses à glaces of this form and one of those also has the date letter Y for 1775.

The pair of plateaux Bourets from the Dumoulin service were in the 1960s and 1970s in the collection of Mr. Henry Ford II and sold by former wife Mrs. Deane Johnson in 1972.