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Gobelet litron et soucoupe
Factory:
Sèvres Porcelain Manufactory
Painter:
Vielliard, André-Vincent
Soft-paste porcelain cup and saucer, with pale yellow ground, painted in blue with a continuous landscape, and gilded.
Soft-paste porcelain decorated with a pale yellow ground, painting blue and purple enamels, and gilding. Cylindrical cup with arched and incurved handle. Circular saucer with flat central area and deep sloping sides. There is a suspension hole in the footring of the saucer. Both pieces have a pale yellow ground. The lower part of the cup is painted in blue with a continuous landscape including buildings and figures, beneath which there is a band of purple. Above the landscape there is a dainty border of undulating blue garlands, manganese-purple dots in threes one above the other, and U-shapes. Round the rim there is a gold band, a reserved white band and a purple band. There are gold lines down the sides of the handle, a stylised leaf, and two smaller trefoil leaves seaparated by dots down its back. The central area of the saucer is decorated with a circular wreath of the same border pattern as the cup. The sides are decorated en suite with those of the cup, but the landscape is different and includes ships as well as buildings and figures. There is a purple line and a band of gilding round the rim.
History note: Uncertain before testator, Louis C.G. Clarke, MA, LL.D., Leckhampton, Cambridge
Louis C.G. Clarke Bequest, 1960
Method of acquisition: Bequeathed (1961-04-24) by Clarke, Louis Colville Gray
18th Century, Late
Louis XVI
Production date:
AD 1788
: The date letter LL should indicate 1789 but it appears from examples and archival evidence that it was used in 1788. This seems to have occurred because after II for 1786, JJ was used for 1786-7, KK for 1787 and LL for 1788.
André-Vincent Vieillard (1717-90) worked for the factory from 1752 to 1790. From the mid 1760s he often painted landscapes with small figures, and sometimes continuous landscapes over a ground, as opposed to inside reserves.
The gobelet litron was named after a cubic measure, the litron, which was normally made of wood, and was used for dry stuffs, such as corn and peas. Its size in Paris had been defined in 1670 as the equivalent of 9.45 cm high and 10.15 cm in diameter in pouces and lignes, which was larger than the largest of the porcelain cups. The first size of gobelet litron had been introduced at Vincennes before October 1752 when it was mentioned in an inventory of stock, but was probably being made earlier.The second and third sizes followed in 1753, and the fourth and fifth in 1757. They could be fitted with one of seven different handle forms . A drawing in the archives at Sèvres is dated 19 February 1753 (MNS, R1, liasse 2, dossier 2, No. 6bis) They were supplied singly, singly with a plateau carré, in ’harlequin’ sets, or as part of matching dejeuner. (See Documentation, Savill, 1988, Présux and d'Albis, 1991, Bellaigue 2009) This is a gobelet litron and soucoupe of the third size with Savill's handle shape B.
Yellow grounds were not really popular until about 1775 and then continued to be so through the 1780s, particularly after 1787. See other examples C.8 & A-1956 and C.60 & A-1961 also by Vielliard, both of which are painted with continuous landscapes, in blue and purple respectively.
Decoration
composed of
enamels
( blue and purple)
ground colour
( pale yellow)
gold
Saucer
Diameter 12.2 cm
Height 3 cm
Cup Rim
Diameter 5.6 cm
Cup
Height 5.9 cm
Cup With Handle
Width 7.9 cm
presumed
Lead-glaze
Soft-paste porcelain
Inscription present: interlaced L's
Inscription present: horizontal mark with three evenly dispersed dots along it
Accession number: C.62 & A-1961
Primary reference Number: 75684
Stable URI
Owner or interested party:
The Fitzwilliam Museum
Associated department:
Applied Arts
This record can be cited in the Harvard Bibliographic style using the text below:
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IIIF Manifest
The Fitzwilliam Museum (2024) "Gobelet litron et soucoupe" Web page available at: https://collection.beta.fitz.ms/id/object/75684 Accessed: 2024-11-02 16:32:24
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{{cite web|url=https://collection.beta.fitz.ms/id/object/75684
|title=Gobelet litron et soucoupe
|author=The Fitzwilliam Museum|accessdate=2024-11-02 16:32:24|publisher=The
University of Cambridge}}
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