The Rothschild Plat d'apparat

Rouen earthenware with ochre niello decoration, circa 1725

ROUEN, circa 1725-1730

Large round earthenware platter with ochre decoration on a blue background: in the center, two musician loves in front of a column, a table and a frame, one sitting on a drapery, carrying on his knees an open score and holding a rolled parchment in his raised right hand, inscribed in a large circular medallion with ochre decoration of a canopy, trellis and large foliated scrolls, in a larger medallion adorned with blue radiating fleurons and a border with ochre trellis on a blue background. The wing is decorated in Amours ochre holding two bottles sitting on a barrel, alternating with Bacchus and Flora mascarons on a blue background decorated with foliated foliage and ochre trellis rinceaux with a niello effect, the edge underlined with simulated ochre gadroons on a black background.

18th century, circa 1725-1730.

Diam. 56 cm.
(A chip on the back of the border, a slight lack at the heel)

Provenance:
- old James de Rothschild collection
- Former Gustave de Rothschild collection
- Former Robert de Rothschild collection in 1932
- Pierre Vandermeersch
- Ancienne collection Monmélien, sale in Paris, Hôtel Drouot, Me Paul Renaud, 6 December 1983, n°51, 420.000 F.
- Private collection.

Exhibition:
- Retrospective exhibition of French earthenware at the Museum of Decorative Arts, Paris, 1932, n°527.

Bibliography:
- Reproduced in Répertoire de la faïence française, 1933, illustrated on plate 87, volume Rouen.
- Faïences française, catalog of the exhibition at the Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris, 1980. A copy cited p. 214 as the flat counterpart of the Gérard bequest preserved in the Louvre Museum (OA 5011), referenced as "one of the most successful examples of the niellé style".

The Rothschild earthenware dish from Rouen

By Cyrille Froissart.

Nearly a century after Masséot Abaquesne's activity (c.1500-1564) in Rouen in the 16th century, earthenware production in this city experienced a new boom from the 1640's. A monopoly was granted in 1644 by the Regent Anne of Austria to Nicolas Poirel, Lord of Grandval, former bailiff of the Queen's cabinet. His privilege obtained for fifty years authorized him to produce "all kinds of white fayence crockery & covered with enamel of all colors". In 1645, he cedes the exploitation of his privilege in 1645 to Edmé Poterat (1612-1687), a potter from Champagne. Poterat worked with his two sons, Louis (1641-1696) and Michel (1655-1745) in a factory located rue d'Elboeuf in the Saint-Sever district.

If at first, the shapes and decorations are very inspired by Nivernais earthenware and then by chinoiseries coming from Delft, a Rouen style emerges from the 1680s and in the first years of the 18th century characterized by radiant mantling or embroidery. These decorations know innumerable variations, the line being refined with time while the mantling becomes more excavated, richer, being decorated with flowers, foliage, baskets, shells, masks or garlands. At the end of the Poterat privilege in 1698 and 1709, new earthenware factories were created in Rouen. They are ten in 1720, the main ones directed by Madame de Villeray and the lords Fouquay, Heugue, Bertin, Caussy, Guillebaud, and thirteen in 1749. This period between 1700 and 1740 was the golden age of Rouen faience, when the Court began to use earthenware, abandoning its silver tableware to respond to the wishes of Louis XIV. It reached the apogee of French earthenware and spread throughout Europe.

In the 1720s, an original decoration, exclusively from Rouen, appears. It consists of large black or blue foliage drawn on an ochre background painted on the white enamel of the earthenware. In the center of the flat pieces are reserved in blue on the ochre background of children's friezes, bacchanals or coats of arms. Designated in the 19th century as an ochre yellow background, this decoration has been called niellated ochre since the beginning of the 20th century because of its resemblance to the nielle decorations executed by goldsmiths or harquebusiers who poured a silver sulfide paste or black enamel inside incised motifs.

An earthenware tray in the Rouen museum and a bearded dish from the old Brument collection with this decoration are both dated 1726, which places the use of niellized ocher in Rouen in the second half of the 1720's. Some evidence suggests that the factory of Paul Caussy and his son Pierre Paul may have produced niellized ochre decoration, but it is not impossible that several Rouen factories used it at the same time.

In Rouen, these drawings on an ochre background give the effect of the copper marquetry of the furniture of Pierre Gole, André-Charles Boulle or Nicolas Sageot. On some very rare earthenware, including our dish, the colors are reversed, the painting of figures, coats of arms or scrolls is executed in ochre on a blue background. Among these pieces is a tableware with the coat of arms of the Asselin de Villequier family, probably those of Jacques, adviser to the Parliament of Rouen, who died in 1727. This table especially is kept in the David Collection in Copenhagen. Plates decorated in the center of the arms of Le Marguetel, Marquis of Saint-Denis du Gast and of Saint-Evremont, offer two versions of the same decoration but in reversed colors, seeming to imitate the part and counterpart of the marquetry of Boulle (Figs. 1 & 2). Finally, a large ceremonial dish, with the same decoration as our dish, but with an inverted composition, is preserved in the Louvre Museum (Fig. 3). These two dishes were most probably made to hang one from the other. The dish in the Louvre comes from the Albert Gérard collection, which bequeathed it to the museum in 1900.





In 1932, a major retrospective exhibition of French earthenware was organized at the Pavillon de Marsan, a major event on a scale never seen before, where nearly 800 Rouen earthenware pieces were presented to the public among 3337 French earthenware pieces. Following the 1932 Exposition, Doctor Chompret, President of the Société des Amis de Sèvres, Jacques Guérin, Paul Alfassa, curators of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, and Jean Bloch published the Repertoire de la Faïence Française, a monumental work in five volumes illustrating the masterpieces and documentary pieces of all the earthenware factories of France, and which remains a reference work.

Our dish and that of the Louvre Museum were brought together in 1932 for this exhibition and are both reproduced in the Repertoire de la Faïence française .

It should be noted that the large, richly decorated dishes in Rouen earthenware are purely decorative and far removed from their value in use. These dishes were seen in their vertical position, either hanging on the wall or, more likely, presented on credenzas or on the shelves of large dressers. Gilles Grandjean studied the presence of Rouen earthenware in inventories made in 18th century Normandy and found no mention of dishes hanging on the walls. The heel of most of these dishes is pierced with two or three holes, as on our dish, allowing them to be hung, but these holes are often off-center in relation to the decoration. No doubt we can deduce that they were used to fix the dishes to the bottom of the sideboards.

The figures painted on earthenware with ochre niello decoration are mainly extracted from engravings by Jean I Bérain (1640-1711), from bacchanals by Pierre Brébiette (1598-1650) or from the engraved suite of Jeux et Plaisirs de l'enfance (Games and Pleasures of Childhood) by Claudine Bouzonnet-Stella (1641-1697). A source for the central scene of our dish has not been identified. These same two seated children appear at the top of a procession of child musicians on a rectangular tray from the former Manzi collection (Figs. 4 & 5). This procession of child musicians without the seated children is present at the center of large round dishes, trays and tops, detailed by Gilles Grandjean in his study and whose source he has not been able to discover . But this connection with the tray of the former Manzi collection suggests that the book open on the child's lap in the center of our dish is a musical score.

Figure 4 et 5 Plateau de l’ancienne collection Manzi, Paris, 20-22 mars 1919, lot 57

Figure 4 et 5 Plateau de l’ancienne collection Manzi, Paris, 20-22 mars 1919, lot 57

32th GARDEN PARTY SALE - I
Sunday, October 4^th 2020, 14:00
Lot 50