Literature

This shape was developed and first used for the great 'jewelled' toilet service made for Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette to present to Maria-Feodorovna, Crown Princess of Russian when in Paris in 1782 incognito as the Comtesse du Nord.

Her toilet service is in her home the Palace of Pavlovsk still to this day. This neo-classical form was not made in large volumes and the present example has extremely rare decoration. Firstly, the body is not of white porcelain with a pale blue ground, but the clay it is of tinted porcelain. This colour was mainly used for some large vases in the 1780s and was known in the factory archives as 'gris agathe'. It was usually left glazed but without painting over the body colour. This example has remarkably fine painting ins a monochrom mauve colour of neo-classical arabesque patterns.