Sugar Bowl
Medium
Hard-paste porcelain, polychrome enamels, gilding
Dimensions
11.3 × 10.5 cm (4 7/16 × 4 1/8 in.)
Classification
sugar bowl
Department
Applied Arts of Europe
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
120413
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Bird painting has always been popular at Sèvres. The birds (oiseaux) on this sugar bowl are drawn from engravings in Histoire naturelle des oiseaux, an 18th-century natural history treatise by the French naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon (1707–88). These engravings were first used as source material at Sèvres in 1781.
About the Artist
Manufacture nationale de Sèvres · 1763–1800
The Manufacture nationale de Sèvres, a premier French porcelain factory, flourished from 1763 to 1800 as the royal powerhouse of European ceramics, producing opulent soft- and hard-paste porcelain under the patronage of Louis XV and XVI. Originally founded in Vincennes in 1740 to rival Meissen and Chantilly, it relocated to Sèvres in 1756 and was fully acquired by the Crown in 1759, becoming the M...