Square Openwork Tea Service (déjeuner carré à jour)

Square Openwork Tea Service (déjeuner carré à jour)

LCSH: Porcelain, French—18th century—Pictorial works | Porcelain, French—Private collections | Porcelain, French—Sèvres—18th century—Slide collections | Sèvres porcelain—18th century—Pictorial works | Slides (Photography)—Private collections | Fritzsche, Ulrich—Art collections—Pictorial works | Ceramic tableware—France—18th century | Drinking cups—France—18th century | Tea trays—France—18th century | Painted trays—France—18th century | Gilding—France—18th century | Landscapes on porcelain—France—18th century | Decoration and ornament—Plant forms—France—18th century | Flowers in art | Plants in art | Trees in art | Architecture in art | Thévenet, Louis-Jean—Pictorial works

Getty AAT keywords: porcelain (material) | porcelain (visual works) | dinnerware | trays | tea trays | cups (drinking vessels) | porcelain painting (image-making) | gilding-technique | piercing | landscapes (representations) | flower (motif) | floral patterns | trees | plant-derived motifs

35mm color slide of a tea (or coffee) service consisting of a square tray and matching cup (Sèvres Porcelain Manufactory). The cup’s rim is gilded with a dentil pattern. Both tray and cup are decorated with small blue-and-white vignettes, featuring fragments of architectural scenes and trees, inside heart-shaped frames of gilt, stylized foliage. The center of the tray has a shaped white reserve, painted with multi-colored festoons of flowers. The tray has a distinctive openwork structure; it is known as a plateau carré à jour (square openwork tray), a type of tray first produced in 1757 and characterized by a deep rim pierced with Vitruvian scrolls and bellflowers (Savill 1988, 2:491, 2:585; Sassoon 1991, 36). Eriksen and De Bellaigue regard this use of scrolls as “one of the first unmistakable signs of the incipient classical revival at Sèvres” (1987, 306 no. 118). Both tray and cup have a painter’s mark for Louis-Jean Thévenet, also known as Thévenet père (the elder; b. 1707–d. after 1778; active 1741–1777), who was one of the “most skilled flower-painters” of his era (Eriksen and De Bellaigue 1987, 96; dates from Savill 1988, 3:1071). The number 27 is handwritten on the slide.

See the Fritzsche Porcelain Exhibit for more details on this tray, Vitruvian scrolls, Thévenet, and porcelain painters’ marks.

Fritzsche, Ulrich (creator of slide); D’Arms, Ted (photographer); Sèvres Porcelain Manufactory (creator of object)

Seattle Art Museum Libraries

1761 (date of object)

20th century (date of slide)

Painter, Kirsten Blythe

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application/jpg

English | French

still image

See Complete Bibliography for the Fritzsche Porcelain Collection

France

eighteenth century (dates CE)

slide, scanned using an Epson Perfection V600 Photo scanner at 3200 dpi.