| 介绍（英） | The successful production of soft-paste porcelain at the Saint-Cloud factory at the very end of the seventeenth century led to the founding of several ceramic enterprises in Paris during the first few decades of the following century.[1] All of these small-scale Parisian factories not only were inspired by the commercial success of Saint-Cloud but also either direct or indirect offshoots of that factory. Barbe Coudray (French, d. 1717), the owner of Saint-Cloud, had been awarded a privilege in 1702 that granted the factory the sole right to produce porcelain, and this privilege was extended to the children of Coudray (also spelled Coudret) and those of her late husband Pierre Chicaneau (French, 1618–1677). The small factories that were established in Paris shortly thereafter were founded either by one of the Chicaneau children or with the involvement of someone who had worked at the Saint-Cloud factory. Most of these factories operated on a very small scale, and the surviving production is extremely limited. Indeed, the identification of some of these factories and the correct interpretation of the marks that were implemented have occurred only in recent years, and what is now known comes as much from various contemporary documents as from surviving pieces of porcelain.
A very small group of porcelains made in Paris during the first quarter of the eighteenth century, which are marked with an AP on the underside, are now understood to be the products of an enterprise run by a potter named Antoine Pavie (French, d. 1727).[2] Pavie was the son of a faience maker in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, but the degree to which Pavie himself was actively involved in the production of faience is not known. However, Pavie went into business in 1703 with a potter named Pierre Pélissié (French, 1678–1756) to produce “transparent porcelain in the Chinese manner such as is made at Saint-Cloud.”[3] Pélissié, who had worked at Saint-Cloud, agreed to furnish the recipe for porcelain for the sum of 200 livres,[4] and the agreement specified that the porcelain production was to take place on the premises of Pavie’s house and faience workshop. While the location of the enterprise is known, there is little evidence of the factory’s history other than the small number of surviving pieces of soft-paste porcelain bearing Pavie’s mark. Curiously, the soft-paste body developed by Pavie and his workers differs from that used at Saint-Cloud,[5] leaving unexplained why an alternative soft paste was produced despite the expensive purchase of Saint-Cloud’s recipe.
The soft-paste porcelains bearing Pavie’s mark[6] are characteristically small in scale and simple in form; known examples include three spice boxes,[7] a mustard pot,[8] a small beaker,[9] two saucers,[10] a salt,[11] a sauceboat,[12] a small covered pot,[13] a cruet set,[14] and the Museum’s ewer, which is the most ambitious surviving example of Pavie’s production.[15] All of the known objects marked by Pavie are decorated solely in underglaze blue, and the style of decoration and choice of motifs are influenced by those found on both contemporary Rouen faience and Saint-Cloud porcelain. Most of the forms employed by Pavie are derived from silver models, and many have simple gadrooned decoration, a type of molded convex vertical fluting that is commonly found on contemporary silver.[16]
The form of the Museum’s ewer and its gadrooned lower section almost certainly are based on French silver examples from the early eighteenth century, and it is the largest known surviving object from Pavie’s factory. In addition, its painted decoration is the most complex and sophisticated found in any of Pavie’s oeuvre. Rather than the simple scrolls and lambrequins [17] typically found on Pavie porcelain, the shaped panels of painted decoration, in which flowers, leaves, and scrolls are densely interwoven, reflect a remarkable degree of skill in both conception and execution. The decoration is further enhanced by the finely painted birds that occupy the center of each defined white area created by the unusual motif of vertical bands that connect the shaped panels above and below. The painter responsible for the decoration on this ewer must have been aware of Rouen blue-and-white porcelain from the first quarter of the eighteenth century,[18] but he has created an original decorative scheme rather than simply combining elements taken from other sources. It is likely the ewer was originally accompanied by a basin, and the decoration on both the basin and the ewer would have coordinated.[19] The slight warping of the body of the ewer and its inelegant foot reflect the experimental nature of the Pavie workshop, but nevertheless it is one of the most significant testaments to the ambition to master porcelain production in early eighteenth-century France.
Footnotes
(For key to shortened references see bibliography in Munger, European Porcelain in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. NY: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2018)
1 This topic is explored thoroughly in Plinval de Guillebon 1999.
2 Plinval de Guillebon 1993.
3 Plinval de Guillebon 1999, p. 89.
4 Régine de Plinval de Guillebon has cited the amount as 200 livres in Plinval de Guillebon 2010, p. 57, as well as in earlier publications (see, for example, Plinval de Guillebon 1994, p. 4).
5 Recent X-ray analysis characterized Pavie soft-paste porcelain as containing alkaline glass, whereas Saint-Cloud soft-paste porcelain contains an alkaline frit; Plinval de Guillebon 1999, p. 90.
6 The mark is either the initials AP or AP with a star painted in underglaze blue.
7 One is in the Musée National Adrien Dubouché, Limoges, Cité de la Céramique; Plinval de Guillebon 2010, fig. 3. A second is in the Cité de la Céramique, Sèvres; Plinval de Guillebon 1995, fig. 55; Plinval de Guillebon 1999, fig. 7-8. A circular spice box is in the Porzellansammlung, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden; Cassidy-Geiger 1999, fig. 8-1.
8 Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Saumur; Plinval de Guillebon1995, fig. 57.
9 Cité de la Céramique, Sèvres; ibid., fig. 56; Plinval de Guillebon 1999, fig. 7-9.
10 One is in the Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle, County Durham, England; ill. in T. Avery 1996, pp. 4–5. The other is in a private collection; Le Duc 1996, ill. p. 331.
11 Cité de la Céramique, Sèvres; Plinval de Guillebon 2010, fig. 5.
12 Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris; Plinval de Guillebon 1999, fig. 7-11.
13 Cité de la Céramique, Sèvres; Plinval de Guillebon 2010, fig. 9.
14 Christie’s, New York, sale cat., October 21–22, 2010, no. 475.
15 See Plinval de Guillebon 1994, pp. 1–30, which lists fourteen identified Pavie objects including marks and dimensions.
16 See, for example, Dennis 1994, vol. 1, pp. 186–87, nos. 275, 276.
17 A lambrequin is a motif that resembles a draped piece of cloth, often with tassels. The motif was commonly used in a variety of media in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, including ceramics, silver, and wood.
18 See, for example, a pair of potpourris in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (Hildyard 1999, pp. 34, 136, fig. 36), and a ewer in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (17.190.1783).
19 The handle of the ewer is a modern replacement. Radiography of the ewer indicates that none of the original handle remains, and departmental files do not indicate if the current handle was already in place when the ewer entered the Museum in 1917. |