Literature

Elaborate early factory mark in blue, adjacent painter's mark of dividers thought to be for Mutel (active at Sèvres 1754-59, 1765-67, 1771-74). Boldly incised mark M which perhaps it can be read as W.

This is the early shape of assiette à gauderons designed by the silversmith Duplessis for the Vincennes manufactory around 1752. This shape was used for the first batch of plates for Louis XV's first great ground colour dinner service, the bleu céleste service made from 1753 to 1755. Plates from that service now in the collection of the Duke of Buccleuch at Boughton House all have the similar interlaced Ls factory mark with dots and no date-letter like our plate. Its' rococo scroll gadroons are bold in outline, and the modelling of the edge of the well is echoed on the reverse. This last feature came from the influence of silver plate forms and was simplified a year later by the porcelain factory.

The dividers mark was formerly believed to be that of the painter Mutel, but the expert David Peters now considers that Mutel painted landscapes not figures. In any case, Mutel only started work in 1754. See, David Peters, Decorator and date marks on C18th Vincennes and Sèvres porcelain, 2019.

Further plates of this same shape and decoration are known: one in the Sèvres Museum, one in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris (Vincennes catalogue, 1977-78, nos. 15 and 16), and one formerly in the Charles-Otto Ziesenis collection (sold Christie's Paris, 6 December 2001, lot 117).

They may well come from the set of twelve plates "à gauderons" decorated with "enfants camayeux" sold to the marchand-mercier Bazin on 14 January 1754. Another set of plates was sold for cash on 21 August 1753 with the same decoration and price, but the name of the plate shape is not specified in the sales registers for that second group.