Specialist Matilda Burn tells the story of the French factory founded more than years ago, from the evolution of its beautiful wares to the monarchs who waited years for their commissions to be created. In the 18th century, porcelain was one of the most highly prized commodities in the world. Only the very wealthy could afford objects made of this fragile material, which, until European production began, had to be shipped at great expense from the Far East. Porcelain was developed in China around 2, years ago, but the recipe was a closely guarded secret.
Soft-paste porcelain was produced at Chantilly, Saint-Cloud and, from , at Vincennes. From the beginning, Vincennes enjoyed privileged status among the porcelain factories as manufacture royale , with royal patronage and financial support from King Louis XV and Madame de Pompadour. A Vincennes baluster pot and cover, circa Some early French porcelain had an imitative quality.
The Vincennes pot above emulates the shape and decoration of Meissen pieces painted with harbour scenes. Among the first pieces produced were small tea and coffee wares with coloured grounds and gilding.
These in turn usually enclose another letter or double letter, indicating the year in which the piece was produced. A tea bowl with the letter A on it would have a production date of circa Painters were famed for particular skills. These craftsmen often passed their skills down through the generations, so several painters of the same name might be mentioned in the records across decades.
During the 19th century, the interlaced letter Ls were replaced by a variety of stencilled, printed and painted marks. Sometimes this can be revealed by a lack of confidence in the way the mark was painted, sometimes by the quality of the piece and its decoration. A fake may be a vase with a badly painted scene on it, or a tea bowl with a ground colour that is too garish, or a gilded cartouche that is too bright and thickly painted. A giveaway for these pieces is that they often have black specks in the white porcelain body, which can appear when porcelain is re-fired.
