In 1800, when Alexandre
Brongniart was appointed director of the Sèvres porcelain manufactory, among
the first initiatives he undertook was the inauguration of a study collection
of ceramics. To this end, he began the aggressive acquisition of samples of raw
materials and examples of contemporary work, many in the neoclassical idiom,
which would be added to an existing assemblage of ancient ceramics in the
possession of the manufactory. By the 1830s, however, his mission had expanded
considerably. He recognized the need for a scientific classification of
ceramics, and the Sèvres collections came to include a considerable array of
historical pieces. By Brongniart’s death in 1847, the museum had become one of
the first encyclopedic collections of ceramics in the world. This endeavor also
influenced Brongniart’s own evolution as a scholar, culminating in the
publication of his seminal Traité des
arts céramiques (1844) and Description
méthodique du musée céramique (1845), a catalogue of the Sèvres collection,
written in collaboration with Derris-Désiré Riocreux.
The
concept of establishing a museum of ceramic arts, crafts, and techniques in the
early nineteenth century might not seem surprising in itself, especially given
the museological fever that was sweeping Europe at the time. Even Brongniart’s
success in mobilizing scholars, researchers, and manufacturers to share their
knowledge might be seen simply as evidence of the intellectual openness and
spirit of cooperation that prevailed in the European scientific community in
the first half of the century. The actual acquisition of material, however,
more than 3,800 objects entering the collection through what often amounted to
bartering, is unusual and of much greater significance.
Although
Brongniart claimed to have followed strict guidelines in assembling the
collection, as outlined in the catalogue (1845), by the time of his death
the range of the collection had changed considerably. It encompassed everything
from pre-Columbian vases to eighteenth-century Meissen porcelain animals
(acquired through an exchange with the Palais Japonais in Dresden), from raw
materials to all manner of studio equipment including a kiln. The rarity and
beauty of some of the objects also belied Brongniart’s claims to have followed
rigid, formal criteria.
The Genesis of the Sèvres Museum
Beginning in the
mid-eighteenth century, the need for museums in France was discussed at great
length in philosophical, artistic, and even political circles. As private
collections began to proliferate, there was growing criticism of this
appropriation of significant artistic achievement, especially because of the
constraints placed on public access to art. As was often noted, the
restrictions often made it impossible for young artists to learn by studying
and copying the most illustrious works of the past. As early as 1747, La
Font de Saint-Yenne published a pamphlet in which he advocated exhibiting in
the Louvre “all the immense and unknown riches” of the royal
collections, “arranged systematically.”
In
the decorative arts, a growing resolve to improve the quality of production
through technical instruction and the study of models led to the establishment
of tuition-free drawing schools, the first of which was founded in Rouen in
1741 by the painter Jean-Baptiste Descamps. These schools assembled study
collections from which future museums would develop. Thus, in 1766, when the
painter Jean-Jacques Bachelier, who had been artistic director of the Sèvres
manufactory since 1751, proposed that such an institution be founded in Paris
it was part of a larger phenomenon.
From
this beginning, the Musée Céramique eventually emerged. In a similar spirit,
the many plates illustrating artisans’ workshops in Denis Diderot and Jean
d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie, ou
Dictionnaire Raisonné des Sciences, des Arts et des Métiers (1751-72) were
meant to broaden knowledge about the decorative arts and crafts as well as to
encourage appreciation of their importance.
By
the final decade of the eighteenth century the revolutionary government in
France found itself confronted with the vexing problem of how to manage the
immense patrimony of the transformed French nation. Much of this consisted of
the confiscated property of the clergy (November 2, 1789), the émigres (November
9, 1791), and the crown (August 10, 1792). Deliberating the disposition of this
vast array of buildings, paintings, sculpture, artifacts, and other objects,
two opposing camps soon emerged: one, smaller and ultimately less powerful,
advocated the destruction of the symbols of a detested regime; the other called
for the preservation of these “monuments of the arts and sciences,”
which were deemed the heritage of “a regenerated France.”
Soon
after the opening of the Muséum National des Arts on August 10, 1793, the abbé
Grégoire, an inveterate opponent of the destruction of property, submitted a
report dated 8 Vendemaire year 3 (September 27, 1794) to the National
Convention calling for the establishment of a Conservatoire des Arts et
Métiers. His plan was approved, leading to the establishment of the first
European museum of science and industry. And thanks to the efforts of Alexandre
Lenoir, a depository of confiscated church possessions was set up in the
convent of the Petits Augustins, in Paris; it became the Musée des Monuments
Français. Ultimately, the preservationists prevailed, but only after an
explosion of iconoclastic violence wrought irreparable damage to the material
remains of the monarchical and ecclesiastical past.
It
was at this propitious moment that Brongniart was appointed director of the
Sèvres manufactory. When he arrived, on March 24, 1800, he found himself at the
head of a ruined institution that had lost two-thirds of its personnel. As part
of his plan to restore it to operation and, above all, to obtain much-needed
revenues, Brongniart envisioned opening a retail establishment in Paris. To
raise the necessary funds, he proposed to the ministre de l’interieur that he be permitted to auction off
outdated pieces from the manufactory’s stock.
A
porcelain painter named Jullien, son of one of the directors of the
Bourg-La-Reine factory, then advanced an even more audacious plan. In a letter
dated 18 Fructidor year 8 (September 6, 1800) to the Conseil des Mines, a copy
of which was sent to Brongniart on 22 Fructidor (September 11), Jullien first
expressed his approval of the council’s intention to place on exhibit
“beside the white soil of the Département de la Haute Vienne, the
industrial products that had been made from it.” This idea of
displaying raw materials alongside objects made from them would form one of the
key approaches to collecting adopted by Brongniart.
Jullien
also suggested that this initiative be widened to include pieces made in the
capital of Paris, whose porcelain makers had become “the most considerable
branch of the industry,” and that examples of contemporary porcelain be
shown with other pieces made previously in Saint-Cloud, Vincennes, Mennecy, and
elsewhere, as well as with “those that successive chemists at the Sevres
manufactory … might offer to the friends of the nation’s art and
industry.” This would constitute “a complete collection for the use
of scientists and researchers, who could perhaps fill whatever gaps they
encountered in the way of degraded tints and increase the number and beauty of
their original colors.” Jullien’s notion of including older work was
ahead of Brongniart’s thinking at the time. Brongniart became interested in
historical pieces for the Sevres museum more than a quarter of a century later.
Jullien
further impressed upon the Conseil des Mines the need for rapid action,
“especially as regards the [pieces] from the Sevres manufactory …. The
auction of porcelains previously fabricated by this establishment is to take
place on the 21st of this month …. Someone must be delegated to put aside
that morning a few pieces which, in his judgment, might be consistent with the
council’s proposed goals.”
Jullien
was a staunch preservationist, but with an important difference. Most other
preservationists considered sculpture, painting, and other works to be worthy
of presentation in a museum, while the decorative arts were judged to be minor
by comparison and of monetary value only. Jullien disagreed, and this view was
shared by Brongniart. A combined preoccupation with very real fiscal concerns
however, and a prejudice against the rococo may have erased any scruples
Brongniart might have had about selling off “these old porcelains that
encumber our warehouses.” He dismissed them as “ces choses gothiques.”
Jullien’s
enlightened position outlined in his letter is aligned with the period’s
preoccupation with issues of pedagogy, with the mission of making museums serve
the higher goal of the progrès des arts.
His stance is unusual, however, for including even those artifacts from the
past, then being sold at auction, which were made exclusively for pleasure and
in a stylistic idiom no longer fashionable. Unfortunately, there is no record
of Brongniart’s ever having mentioned this letter or acknowledging that it had
influenced him any way.
At
the beginning of a long and carefully worded letter to Jean-Antoine Chaptal,
the ministre de l’interieur, dated 10
Thermidor year 9 (July 30, 1802), Brongniart set forth his reasons for wanting to
establish a study collection: “I believe it will be useful to the progress
of the ceramic arts and their history, to assemble in a methodical way, in the
national establishment that was previously a school of one of this art’s
branches and which ought to be that of the art as a whole, all the objects of
art and science that might serve the history of fine and ordinary
pottery.” He pointed out that, although the activity of the
manufactory was “languishing,” it possessed “precious
materials” that might serve as the embryo for such a collection, namely: a
beautiful series of Etruscan vases; a
rather beautiful series of flower, fruit, and animal studies by different
masters, notably Desportes and Oudry; a
series, interesting for the history of the progress of taste, of models for all
the ornamental and utilitarian vases made by the manufactory since its
inception; a
rather large quantity of clay and [other] raw materials from various places and
of various kinds used in the fabrication of pottery.
He
complained, however, about the disorder and the neglect that existed in the
collection. Noting the gaps in the material he suggested that it be
supplemented by the addition of “samples of all pottery clays, both French
and foreign, [and] a set of specimens of all known porcelains and
potteries.” Aware that his superiors would be concerned about the
costs of expanding the museum, he proposed that the ministry collaborate with
him in organizing an official survey called the Enquête des Préfets (see chap.
11), which he argued would serve his purposes, but at minimal government
expense. This would involve the prefects’ “sending to Sevres samples of
all the pottery clays from their districts either in use or usable. Twenty
livres would suffice.” Completed pieces from the various factories and
manufactories would be obtained on an exchange basis. As to the space needed to
house these materials, he explained that the establishment of the retail shop
in Paris had freed a few rooms at the manufactory, which if properly
refurbished, might house the museum.
Brongniart’s
plan bears a strange resemblance to the one elaborated by the Conseil des Mines
a year or so earlier, and he may have had a hand in the latter’s conception.
Chemist, mineralogist, and scientist to the core, he insisted above all on the
utility of such a collection as an educational tool for students of the applied
sciences. Brongniart also voiced another motive, one consistent with views that
were widely held at the time. Since the Treaty of Vergennes (1786), the French
market had been flooded with English creamware, which, being both attractive
and inexpensive, was quite popular. According to Sèvres’s new director, the
development of a competitive French product was nothing less than a national
obligation.
The
systematic assembly and organization of “unknown riches” envisioned
by Brongniart could only further this goal. The dissemination of technical
knowledge might lead to the necessary discoveries, thereby contributing to the
“progress of art, in this case, of the ceramic arts and affiliated
industries. The collection of the future museum began to grow as gifts were
made and other opportunities for acquisitions presented themselves.
The Organization of the Museum
In 1812, after samples
collected under the auspices of the Enquête des Préfets and porcelains from
other principal European producers were in hand, Brongniart began to structure
the collection “from a technical point of view,” a scientific
perspective he preferred throughout his career. He reformulated the
collection’s parameters to include “all objects produced by
firing,” which meant that it would include glassware, enamel work,
mosaics, and even common bricks. To assure that the collection had “all
the didactic interest” to which he aspired, he had explanatory labels
attached to the pieces, making sure in particular that they specified the name
of the donor. The labeling of everything that entered the collection was
essential.
He
was admirably assisted in this project by Denis-Désiré Riocreux, who began his
career at the manufactory as an ornamental painter. Obliged to abandon
porcelain painting due to serious vision problems, he was placed in charge of
experiments with vitreous colors. Brongniart had more important plans for him,
however, and by the end of 1817 Riocreux was made de facto curator of the manufactory’s growing collection, with
instructions to label the pieces, register them, and “oversee all correspondence
with the publishers in the field.” This directive required Riocreux to
make certain that government agencies sent the manufactory all new publications
on ceramics and related topics. Riocreux brought to his task an artist’s
sensibility as well as considerable insight. The museum’s archives contain
countless notes detailing discoveries made by Riocreux, all of them
countersigned by Brongniart who either approved or rejected them. In 1829, five
years after the museum had opened to the public, Riocreux was officially named
its curator.
Information
about the physical appearance of the museum is scarce. It was situated on the
second floor of the manufactory, above the painting workshops. Apparently
its furnishings were modest, for in 1834 Brongniart complained that the waxed
floor was dangerously slippery, presenting a danger to visitors, and called for
the installation of walkways covered by “carpeting, oil-cloth, or even
plain cloth.” That, however, is the extent of documentation of the
premises. It is not known when the decision was made to draw up an inventory.
By 1817 at the latest, Riocreux was responsible for drafting all the entries in
the inventory. In fact, two different inventories were drawn up. The first
adhered to the classification schema later used by Brongniart in both the Traité des arts céramiques and the Description méthodique du musée céramique.
However, Riocreux eventually abandoned this typological system in favor of an
approach based on acquisition date.
The
government was hesitant to underwrite purchases. In principle Brongniart had to
obtain special authorization for such expenditures, and his superiors were not
above reprimanding him when they felt he had neglected this duty. When the
collection had reached a certain stage of development, however, the only way
for Brongniart to fill some of its gaps was to venture into the art market. In
1825 he made his first request to the vicomte de La Rochefoucauld, then directeur général des beaux arts de la
Maison du Roi and his direct superior, for an annual “special fund of
1,000 francs” for the acquisition, over and above whatever works and
models were needed for the manufactory’s workshops, of “all sorts of
primary materials and ceramic products, from the most commonplace pottery to
the most precious, from all periods and all nations.” In 1826
Brongniart requested “special funds” for the acquisition of some
Chinese porcelains at the Sallé sale. Given the scarcity of available
funding, it is not surprising that Brongniart developed the habit of obtaining
pieces he wanted for the museum by offering samples of modern Sèvres production
in return. Riocreux kept a register of all such “gifts” offered in
exchange for donations to the collection.
The Collection of Ancient Ceramics
During the second half of
the eighteenth century, many wealthy, educated, and socially prominent people
became interested in archaeological excavations, an activity that would
indirectly prove to be quite beneficial to the Sèvres museum. In the nineteenth
century this pastime became increasingly popular. As a zealous antiquarian,
Dominique-Vivant Denon had amassed, during his sojourn in the Kingdom of the
Two Sicilies, a considerable number of ancient ceramics, which he sold to Louis
XVI in 1786. They account for the first 292 numbers of Riocreux’s
inventory. Most date to the Hellenistic period and were made by Greeks
working in Southern Italy: Apulian, Campanian, or Lucanian red-figure vases,
notably a striking black figure askos (MNC 109) decorated with a female profile
linked to a large palmette. Denon’s collection also includes geometric
yellow-slip kraters (MNC 62; fig. 9-1) and kantharitic jars. Also from the
Hellenistic period, but in the Attic style, are a few polished completely black
pieces of unusual form (MNC 99), some Attic black figure vases (MNC 57, 100),
and, in the same group, two kantharitic goblets (MNC 258.1, 244).
Denon’s
example may have later inspired M. Gaspary, the French consul in Crete, who
“offered” - unsolicited and in exchange for ready cash - the pieces
he had collected in 1828 on the island of Milo. His audacity forced
Brongniart’s hand a bit, but a small hydra (MNC 1496.6) and a skyphos (1495-4)
in the geometric style typical of Milo entered the collection. Beginning in
1828, a naval officer named Jules de Blosseville gave the museum its most
significant pieces in this manner.
Indeed,
the many scientific missions organized under the Restauration and the July
Monarchy presented Brongniart with choice opportunities for collecting pieces
from outside of France. As a result, many unusual objects found their way into
the museum’s displays: notably oenochoës(MNC 1419.3, 1419.4, 1419.6) with dark
red geometric decoration painted on white slip; double tumblers (MNC 1419.8)
with white geometric decoration, a kernos (MNC 1419.9) that Brongniart
reproduced in his catalogue of the museum, and finally some large kraters (MNC
1419.2) with polished black decoration. In 1842 these were joined by two small
objects from the Hellenistic period representing a goat and a duck. Excavated
in Athens, they were obtained by the captain of the sloop Embuscade and presented to the manufactory by Dubuc, directeur des dépenses des bâtiments de la
couronne.
In
the 1820s the international archaeological community was electrified by the
discovery of several tombs in the Etrurian region of Chiusi, most especially at
Vulci. In 1828, by means unknown, Riocreux managed to acquire the first
piece from these excavations to enter a French collection: a small black-clay
kantharitic vase with handles (MNC 1075), of Etruscan origin. As the result of
an exchange with a dealer named Toppi, an Italian living in Paris, this piece
was joined a year later by a chamfered and spouted black-polished oinochoë (MNC
1163.4).
In
1836 the collection was considerably enriched by the purchase of seventy pieces
of ceramics, for 1,500 francs, at the second sale of the Durand collection.
Riocreux, to whom Brongniart had delegated his authority during his absence in
England and Germany, faced stiff competition. The other bidders included the
comte de Clarac, curator of antiquities at the Louvre; Raoul Rochette, curator
of the Cabinet des Médailles et Antiques of the Bibliothèque Royale; as well as
various scholars (notably an antiquarian named Brönstedt), wealthy
collectors (including the comte de Pourtalès), and at least one rival
manufacturer, Godard de Baccarat, the director of the firm of Baccarat.
It
is difficult to match entries on the purchase list prepared by Riocreux with
actual pieces in the collection, because the descriptions are too generic.
Number 166 from the sale, however, may correspond to a superb dark green Attic
oinochoë(MNC 2035) with incised decoration. Riocreux spent the considerable sum
of 200 francs for this piece, which he described as: “Greek vase, white
and violet paintings with gold embossed ornament.” The Durand sale
also occasioned the acquisition of the collection’s first Corinthian pottery: two
alabaster vases (MNC 2047, 2048) decorated with animal friezes and featuring a
ground color that Brongniart judged to be quite rare. The Etruscan part of
the collection was also enriched. Pieces bearing secure attributions included,
for example, a kantharitic vase (MNC 2054) of smoked and polished clay with
incised decoration and an unusual four-footed goblet (MNC 2055) with relief
decoration, reproduced in the volume of plates that accompanied the Description méthodique du musée céramique.
It
was also through Toppi that the first Egyptian piece entered the collection, a
funerary statuette (MNC 1185) found in excavations outside Thebes. In 1830 this
object was joined by pieces sent by an envoy of an archaeologist named
Lenormant, notably an earthenware scarab also from Thebes. The museum was
indebted for many of its Egyptian artifacts to the inveterate traveler Baron
Taylor, whose donations included a canopic jar (MNC 1475) from Tanis capped the
head of the deity Hapi (New Kingdom). In 1846 Victor Schoelcher, son of the
ceramics producer Marc Schoelcher, contributed several Egyptian pieces, notably
a long handleless bottle (MNC 3600.2) dating from the Middle Kingdom.
In
January 1836 John Robison, secretary of the Royal Society of Antiquarians in
Edinburgh, sent Sèvres a glazed ornamental brick that, according to him, had
been taken from Babylon. After countless peregrinations it finally arrived but
unfortunately was broken. In 1847, when sculpture from Khorsabad arrived at
the Louvre, Sèvres received more bricks from Babylon through the intermediary
of the French consul in Baghdad.
Gallo-Roman and Celtic Pottery
There were many Roman and
Gallo-Roman ruins in northwestern Europe that had long aroused the curiosity of
both professional and amateur antiquarians. In the nineteenth century, the
proliferation of urban construction sites led to the discovery of many more
such remains. Not surprisingly, the museum’s donors include an engineer from Ponts et Chaussées (the department
responsible for bridges and roads); an architect from the department of public
works; and even an architect in charge of restoring the Luxembourg palace.
Accounts of these discoveries proliferated as amateur and professional
archaeologists widened their searches to excavate tombs and burial mounds.
Gradually, however, interest shifted to the remains of other cultures, and by
1847 Celtic pottery increasingly became a part of the museum’s collection.
The
first donation of Gallo-Roman pottery fragments (MNC 641) was sent in 1809 by
M. Ramond, prefect of Puy-de-Dôme; he claimed they had been found at the
Gergovie plateau, near Clermont in central France. The next acquisition came
only in 1822, when an antiquarian named Schweighaeuser residing in Strasbourg,
donated fragments of pottery molds and pieces with impressed decoration (MNC
773, 774) that he had found at Heiligenberg and Rheinzabern on the Rhenish
frontier. In 1824, thanks to the generosity of Grignon, head of the
ironworks in Bayart, some pieces formerly in the collection of the abbé de
Tersan, a famous eighteenth-century amateur-collector, entered the collection.
These fragments (MNC 829), some of which bear the maker’s name, had been
discovered in 1772 in Champagne.
In
1829 an appeals lawyer named Michelin, at the Cour des Comptes, turned over
vase fragments (MNC 1209, 1210) found on the site of the Palais de Justice on
the Île de la Cité in Paris. To relieve the boredom of life in a small
town, Renaud de Saint-Amour, a colonel in the third regiment of hussars
garrisoned at Lauterbourg, began excavations in its environs. In 1831 he
discovered several potters’ kilns in Rheinzabern that were quite well
preserved. He sent plans of them to Brongniart, as well as three complete
terracotta molds (MNC 1383-1, 1383.2, 1383.3), for which he received in
exchange several pieces of Sèvres porcelain.
Beginning in 1828 the Roman
cemetery near Bordeaux known as Terre-Nègre was excavated by a professor named
Jouannet from the local academy. He donated several small cups (MNC 1054.1,
1054.2) and goblets (MNC 1572.2) in good condition as well as a small amphora
(MNC 1572.4) and an oinochoë(MNC 1572.5) made of reddish clay.
In
Orléans M. Jollois, a local civil engineer, undertook similar excavations in
the Roman cemetery of that city. His finds included a small red vial (MNC
1630.6) with a polished surface and an oinochoë (MNC 3139.1) with a double-pointed
handle. Work at the Luxembourg palace overseen by an architect named Gisors
led to the discovery of the ruins of a pottery in its gardens. Cups and shards
of red-clay pottery (MNC 2287.18, 2287.10) from this site, some of them bearing
a potter’s name, found their way to Sèvres.
The
most remarkable Roman pieces entered the collection in 1836 via the comte
d’Espine, the surgeon-dentist of the king of Sardinia. He donated several
objects discovered in excavations at Pollentia, in Piedmont. These included
amphoras, lamps, and some magnificent glass goblets, one of which is covered
with raised decoration.
Until
this time, gifts and exchanges had brought the collection only small pieces or
fragments. Not surprisingly, when Brongniart learned of the discovery of
fourteen amphoras, each more than seventeen pieds
high at the Gallo-Roman site of Mons-Selencus in the Alps, he asked the mayor
to contribute one of them to the museum.
Increasingly
in the nineteenth century, those interested in ancient history widened the
scope of their studies to include the ancient, indigenous civilizations of
France. A burial mound in Dieppe, which was excavated in 1843, yielded early
fragments. Deville, the curator of the Musée d’Antiquités in Rouen, wrote that
“these crude pottery remains seem to predate the invasion of Julius
Caesar, or at the least to be contemporary with it.” Another
excavator, Delanoue, in sending a donation of pieces, recounted the
circumstances of their discovery: “Pottery fragment found .50 meters below
the surface along with human bones in diluvial deposits in the grotto of
Rancogne.” Even the curate of Sèvres, the abbé Bainvel, became a
disciple of this new archaeological passion and offered the museum a
“druid” vase from a dolmen near Ploemeur.
Brongniart’s carefully
cultivated relations with the European scientific community led to the acquisition
of many examples of Germanic pottery. In 1837 Alexander Baron von Humboldt, the
esteemed German naturalist, donated a hand-shaped cup (MNC 2285) made of
polished yellow clay. In 1838 Forschammer, a German archaeologist,
contributed two gray clay cups, a goblet of yellow polished clay, and some vase
fragments (MNC 2570.2 -2570.7) excavated in what is now Denmark. Finally in
1844 Olfers, curator of antiquities to the king of Prussia, sent fourteen
Germanic vases from the warehouse of his own museum, most of which came from
Brandenburg.
Acquisitions from Travelers
Part of the collection
reflects the adventurous individuals who, in the first half of the nineteenth
century, turned their passion for travel into a recognized profession. In this
period the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle, acting in cooperation with the French
government, organized many expeditions to other regions. Brongniart, who
maintained close ties with those individuals at the museum, did not hesitate to
ask its mineralogists, naturalists, and geographers to act as his agents as
well. Before they departed, he gave them instructions and a few crates that he
hoped would be filled en route with materials for the museum. He had dealings
not only with ships’ captains and lieutenants but often with the surgeons,
doctors, dentists, and other personnel who accompanied the expeditions. Members
of the diplomatic corps were also pressed into service.
Although
many of these individuals possessed little or no knowledge of ceramics,
surprisingly, they appear to have made few mistakes. Perhaps the explanation
for this lies in the instructions Brongniart gave them. He directed them to
purchase pieces only from the districts that they visited, to make these
purchases from knowledgeable sources, or to retrieve pieces recently excavated
from archaeological digs. He also directed them to gather samples of both
ancient and contemporary pottery, preferably complete pieces, but fragments
would suffice. They were to record to the best of their ability the place of
acquisition, the materials used in the fabrication process when possible, and
whether or not a potter’s wheel had been employed. Sketches were to be made of
the kilns, and all samples were to be carefully wrapped and labeled.
Everyone taking part in these efforts was provided with 200 francs to cover
related costs. Sometimes these efforts were for naught, for the hazards of
navigation were such that collected materials did not always reach their
intended destination. In many more cases, however, the museum at Sèvres
benefited significantly.
The Americas
In 1827 thanks to the efforts of a chief surgeon
named Busseuil aboard the frigate
Thétis,
the collection acquired its first piece of pre-Columbian pottery, an entire
black Chimu stirrup vase (MNC 979). The naturalist Dessalines d’Orbigny
made an exploratory voyage to South America that lasted from 1826 to 1834.
During that time, he sent back pottery made by two indigenous tribes, the
Guaranis of Paraguay and the Corrientes of Argentina, and upon returning to
France he delivered to the museum what Brongniart termed a “curious
group” of Incan pieces. This included a vase in the form of a
reclining llama(MNC 1762), a spherical pitcher (MNC 1761) with geometric
decoration found in Bolivia, and, most notably, several pre-Columbian objects
of very high quality, among them a stirrup vase (MNC 12249) in the shape of a
bird and a vase (MNC 1768) decorated with the figure of a large cat, a vase
(MNC 1763) with geometric decoration from Chile (Atacama), and an Aztec figure
(MNC 1773, damaged by exposure) from Teotihuacán in Mexico.
The
French consul Barrot left for the Americas in 1835 and later sent a case of
Peruvian antiquities from Manila. It reached Sèvres in 1838 and contained,
among other things, a lovely Mochica stirrup vase with a body shaped like two
parrots (MNC 2547.1) and a zoomorphic Chimu vase (MNC 2546.3). Admiral
Dupetit-Thouars managed to obtain several Central and South American vases for
the museum. Most were Incan, but they also included a superb Chimu vase (MNC
2797) decorated with a frieze of opossums.
In 1837 a mineralogist named
Stokes, who lived in London, corresponded with Brongniart and donated some
pre-Incan pieces he had gathered in Peru, including several crudely modeled
statuettes (MNC 2417.1, 2417.2, 2418.6).
The
first piece from French Guiana to enter the collection, a newly made
orange-colored cup (MNC 794), was donated in 1823 by Jean François Robert, a
painter at the manufactory, who had obtained it from a ship’s purser.
Thanks to the comte de Clarac, it was joined by another cup from Guiana in
1830. And in 1843 the intrepid ceramicist Victor Schoelcher contributed a
number of important pieces and fragments from the Caribbean, including a mask
(MNC 3646) from Puerto Rico.
North American productions
were also represented. A brown clay vase (MNC 1326) was donated by Professor
Duméril, in 1830, but most of the North American acquisitions were obtained
through the efforts of one of Brongniart’ s former students, a man named
Ducatel, who had become a professor of chemistry in Baltimore. In 1837 he sent
a number of fragments found near the city of Marietta in Ohio.
Coastal Regions of Africa, the Indian
Ocean, and the Pacific
No one
knows why the miniature painter Chapon went to Madagascar, but he returned to
France in 1829 with an apodal water pot (MNC 1076) and a vase (MNC 1085) made
of a grayish paste covered with a graphite-based glaze. Africa was poorly
represented in the collection at the time. In 1836 Brongniart noted in his
instructions to Captain Laplace, who was embarking for Africa, that the museum
possessed “no samples of pottery from southern and eastern Africa”
and that according to the travel account of one Daniel, “the Hottentots
made pieces of pottery that are quite varied and rather large.” The
captain duly obliged Brongniart by penetrating the South African interior in
search of jars and other pottery made by the Bantu, but his efforts were in
vain. Brongniart did not give up, however, and in 1838 he provided a
surgeon major named Ackermann, who was departing for Madagascar, with a similar
set of instructions, but again to no avail. The explorer Rochet d’Héricourt
was more successful. In the course of his expedition to Abyssinia, he managed
to obtain two vases and a bottle (MNC 3751.1, 3751.2) in the Choa kingdom, all
featuring polished black surfaces with incised decoration, which he brought
back in 1845.
The
coastal areas of the subcontinent were explored with increasing intensity in
the second quarter of the nineteenth century. This region of the globe was
scouted for Brongniart by Jules de Blosseville, who in 1828 sent back
twenty-seven objects(MNC 1059- 1062), including glazed pottery from Calcutta
and polychrome figures from Chandernagor. In 1833 the naturalist Lamare Picquot
brought back from Bengal some goblets, coolers, and an incense burner (MNC 1551
- 1554). In 1837 in Pondicherry Laplace acquired some vases for everyday use as
well as “some modeled figures which give an idea of the talent of Indian
potters,” to which he added: “the workers are miserable …; their
trade barely provides them with the wherewithal to survive.” He also
obtained some pieces in Ceylon, a small assortment of Malaysian pottery, and
even some glazed pieces from Cebu in the Philippines (MNC 2857 -2864).
In
1840 explorations in the Fiji Islands acquired some crude pottery coated with a
gummy, resinous glaze; a sample (MNC 2898) was collected by a hydrographic engineer
named Dumoulin, aboard the Astrolabe,
during a round-the-world voyage. In 1846 a ship’s captain named Bérard brought
back from New Caledonia two cooking pots (MNC 3672) coated with a vegetal
glaze.
The Mediterranean Basin and the Arab
World
When the eminent chemist
Jean-Pierre Joseph Darcet departed for Egypt in 1829, the precise set of
instructions Brongniart gave him included an excerpt dealing with pottery from
Denon’s Voyage dans la haute et basse
Egypte (1802) as well as a few lines from a “Mémoire su l’industrie de
l’agriculture de l’Egypte” (Memorandum on Egyptian Industry and
Agriculture) by a certain Girard (undated). According to these texts, the
terracotta pottery production was essentially limited to Upper Egypt between
Dendera and Thebes, a kind of potstone was its predominant material, and the
pieces were baked in the sun.
It
was another donation, brought back in 1830 by Lenormant, an archaeologist who
accompanied Jean-François Champollion to Egypt in 1828, however, that most
intrigued Brongniart. Chemical analysis revealed the glaze on these fragments
to be composed of tin and lead. According to information gathered by Lenormant,
they dated from the ninth century A.D., making them the earliest examples of
stanniferous glazes then known. Other fragments, made from siliceous paste,
resembled those made in ancient Egypt.
In
1832 Baron Taylor compounded this stupefaction by bringing back mosaic tesserae
(MNC 1449) from the wall of the Jerusalem mosque. In the words of Brongniart,
“its paste is so sandy, it is so similar to sandstone that I suspect it is
stone … that has been enameled.”
When
the archaeologist Botta was appointed French consul in Mossul in 1835, he was
expressly reminded not to forget the museum. By and large, Sèvres did well
by Botta, but all he could obtain in San’a, Mecca, and Djedda was everyday
contemporary pottery (MNC 2748 - 2756). Following Baron Taylor’s example, he
also took an enameled tessera (MNC 2757) from a wall of the tomb of Mohammed in
Medina. This zeal, however misplaced, had its reward, pushing back the
documented date of the Arab community’s knowledge of alkaline silicate glazes
by a full century. Tin glazes were in use by the ninth century and alkaline
silicate glazes by the eleventh.
Brongniart
was especially anxious to obtain materials from the Ottoman Empire. In 1830
Virlet, a member of the Morea Commission, sent him a large consignment of
modern pottery from the Dardanelles region along with some pipes from
Constantinople and some vases from Smyrna (MNC 1328 - 1334). In 1843
Brongniart asked Diran, assistant director of the mint in Constantinople, to
contribute “some raw and prepared materials used in the fabrication of
[your] pottery.” In 1847, Viquesnel, a member of the Société Géologique, sent some samples
along with a cover letter describing ceramics production in Sule Burgas.
There
is a handwritten copy of an excerpt of Jean Chardin’s Journal du voyage du chevalier (1711), an account of a trip to
Persia, among Brongniart’s papers at Sèvres. According to Chardin, “so
beautiful are [the] glazes” of the porcelain made in Persia that the work
was virtually indistinguishable from that of China. This impression was
subsequently confirmed by many others, notably the comte de Milly in his book L’Art de la porcelaine (1771).
Brongniart sought a scientific explanation for this, but a definitive answer
long eluded him. A beautiful coupe (MNC 449) that entered the collection in
1806 with a group of Chinese porcelains was decorated with large blue-flowered
rinceaus against a white ground and with highlights in what Brongniart and
Riocreux, in the Description méthodique
du musée céramique, termed an “aureocoppery” luster. Riocreux characterized
it in his inventory as “earthenware imitating porcelain,” adding the
query: “Persian?”
So
strong was the desire for Persian porcelain that Brongniart, like many others,
was tempted to ascribe such origins to seventeenth-century Nevers earthenware
covered in tinted enamel. In 1829 when Brongniart agreed to an exchange
with Toppi that netted the collection a Chinese blue enamel plate with an
overlay white decoration, he had already received the shards sent by Lenormant.
When Riocreux recorded the exchange, however, he resorted to a language of
equivocation frequently encountered in contemporary documents dealing with such
artifacts: “an ordinary blue-enameled earthenware plate called Persian
porcelain.” The object in question is illustrated in the Description méthodique du musée céramique
among “oriental” ware. Riocreux repeated the error in 1843, when
Jules Ziegler, a stoneware maker, donated a small bottle (MNC 3129) “in
the oriental style” featuring a decoration of white flowering branches
against a yellow enamel ground; it was also included in the same plate of
“oriental” wares.
In
1835 in instructions to Botta, Brongniart expressed doubts about the existence
of a true Persian porcelain: “I do not know of any, and I don’t even think
pottery of this kind was made in Persia but they did make, and may make still,
earthenware … remarkable for the beauty of its vivid azure blue
enamel.”
That
same year Brongniart acquired from a Parisian dealer named Poirier a superb
blue Iznik bottle (MNC 1842) that Brongniart thought was Persian. During a
trip to Nuremberg the following year he purchased a jug (MNC 2134) decorated
with pinks and eglantine, described in the inventory as “white paste
[earthenware] simulating porcelain, attributed to the workshops of Persia.”
Brongniart
also had his share of bad luck. A case sent in 1843 by Sir John MacNeil,
English envoy to the shah of Persia, never arrived. This was unfortunate, for
it contained a tile from the Shiraz mosque, another from the Isaphan mosque,
and some wall plaques from the mosques in Tabriz and Rhei.
A
gift presented in 1844 by the captain of the Despointes, however, certainly must have helped to solve the
question of attribution. This was an extraordinary Syrian cup (MNC 3292)
covered with a lapis blue glaze and decorated with a gilded arch motif. The
circumstances of its discovery left no doubt of its origins: it had been found
in a well along with similar cups and an Arabic manuscript. It appears in the Description méthodique du musée céramique,
in the chapter devoted to glazed pottery and is described in the inventory as
an “Arabic production of the ninth century.”
At
the De Guignes sale of 1846 Brongniart purchased a Persian soft-paste cup made
with a rice-grain technique that must have assured him that the Persians had
developed a porcelain body, but by then the Traité
des arts céramiques and the Description
méthodique du musée céramique had already been published. Perhaps he
remained skeptical, because Riocreux, describing the piece in the inventory,
vacillated once again, adding the query: “Persian porcelain?”
The Far East
In 1806 the museum acquired a large number of
Chinese porcelains, and in his preparatory notes for the Description méthodique du musée céramique, Brongniart identifies
the donor of this collection as Pierre Daru, the Intendant Général. In a
letter to Daru dated January 21, 1808, he identifies Denon as having
contributed the first pieces of what was thought to be Japanese porcelain.
Most
of the 107 pieces acquired in 1806 had been porcelains with blue underglaze
decoration in the form of figures or floral motifs, but they also included: a
“Compagnie des Indes” cup bearing a mythological subject painted in
grisaille; some pieces with Imari decoration; others featuring gold decoration
against a blue ground; and a small pot (MNC 380) with a green vermiculated
ground and salamanders in relief.
Prior
to the advent of scholarly, methodical research on Far Eastern ceramics,
analysis of this work was just as difficult as it had been to comprehend
Persian porcelain. It was especially difficult to distinguish between
Chinese and Japanese porcelain, a situation that persisted throughout the
century in varying degrees. Only one written source for Chinese ceramics was
available to Brongniart, and he used it extensively: Lettres édifiantes had been written between 1712 and 1722 by a
Jesuit missionary to China named Père d’Entrecolles. With respect to Japanese
ceramics, Brongniart had to rely on a few lines devoted to the subject in a
1732 book and on the counsel of a German-born acquaintance, a naturalist
and doctor named Siebold, who had lived in Japan for seven years.
The
inventory does not offer precise indications as to when this porcelain entered
the collection, and Riocreux’s vocabulary was understandably too limited in
this domain for him to provide anything other than summary visual descriptions.
Porcelain that was classified as “Compagnie des Indes,” or export
porcelain, made for the East India Company, was not distinguished from other
Chinese porcelain. Dating was practically nonexistent. The first timid attempts
were made on the occasion of the public sale of cargo from the La Fayette in Le Havre in 1844. The
museum apparently purchased a Wan-Li vase (MNC 3401.2).
Brongniart’s
subsequent purchases reflect more clearly his preoccupations as the director of
a porcelain manufactory; they exemplify technical processes that he sought to
master. As he explained to Consul Barrot, who was about to embark on a voyage
that would likely take him to China, “the Chinese apply colors to their
porcelain that are varied and quite bright, very thickly and with a relief we
cannot approach in Europe.” Similar technical considerations prompted
him to request special acquisition funds for the 1826 Sallé sale where he
purchased four pieces with openwork panels, a small flask with double panels,
and three small cups made of agatized glass.”
In
1827 Brongniart acquired six Chinese pieces from a Parisian dealer named
Leblanc, including a “purple red enamel” and another blue enameled
piece (MNC 906 and 907). In 1839 he negotiated an exchange with the perruquier-coiffeur of the town of Sèvres
and acquired a very beautiful Chinese ewer (MNC 2603) lacking its handle – a
fortuitous absence, which, as noted in the inventory, demonstrated that
“the Chinese painted on unfired paste.” In addition, he was always on
the lookout for one of the large vases that only the Chinese seemed to produce.
In 1837 Brongniart, despite the parsimonious government budgets, paid a London
dealer named Baldock 1,165 francs for such a vase (MNC 2420), this one 51 1/4
inches (130 cm) in height; remarkably, it survives intact in the museum
storerooms.
Although
Brongniart increasingly sought to acquire Chinese pieces from all periods, he
specifically asked his agents abroad to obtain modern pieces “of known
date, within ten years,” to select pieces showing the variety of colors
used in China and “never seen in Europe,” and to record their Chinese
names. In 1840 Captain Laplace adhered admirably to this brief. He sent
back from Cochin China several pieces of glazed pottery and stoneware (MNC 2858
-286o) indicating their names and intended use wherever possible. In Canton he
obtained “a large bowl or washbasin” (MNC 2870), some 23 5/8 inches
(60 cm) in diameter, for a mere 135 francs, this low price being due to a
slight crack in the bottom.
A
Sinologist named Callery, who served as an interpreter on the French mission to
China in 1844, acquired some thirty pieces of modern porcelain (MNC 3423,
3424), carefully selected for its variety. But it was a Father Ly who, in 1846,
surpassed Brongniart’s highest hopes by sending a group of contemporary
porcelains from “Kin Te Ching” and, more importantly, some samples of
raw materials carefully packed in a stoneware vase (MNC 3663) to assure their
safe arrival. The previous year Brongniart had obtained from a Parisian dealer
named Houssaye in exchange for goods worth about 3,000 francs, a porcelain
model of the tower of Nankin (MNC 3624, now in the collection of the Musée
Guimet), which soon took its place in the museum alongside eight other pieces.
Chinese
glass production also intrigued Brongniart. As he wrote to Barrot and Laplace,
he had never encountered, either on the market or in a private collection,
glassware or crystal from the Far East. In 1829, three years after acquiring
agatized cups at the Sallé sale, he made an exchange with Toppi and obtained
another small cup (MNC 1180) made of the imitation jade glass known as pâte de riz, or rice paste. By 1838,
although that year a botanist named Gaudichaud brought him two bracelets (MNC
2542) made of the same material, the collection still possessed no ordinary
glassware.
The
pieces donated by Denon in 1808 could not be attributed to Japan with any
degree of certainty. In 1829 Cailleux, the director of the warehouses of the
Musée Royal, presented the museum with fourteen plates (MNC 1201) made of
“porcelaine du japon,” which were in fact Chinese plates with Imari
decoration. The same year, Jules de Blosseville sent Brongniart a large
stoneware jar (MNC 1120) he had acquired in Batavia, supposedly of Japanese
origin and intended “for the storage of water aboard junks.”
In
1823 Dr. Siebold had been sent to Japan on a medical mission. Upon his return
to Paris, he presented Brongniart with a cup (MNC 1966) and a small goblet (MNC
1967) “in the extra-thin porcelain known as eggshell” as well as
another goblet (MNC 1968) “made of porcelain paste fired au dégourdi” or in the middle temperature range. These were
the only pieces that Brongniart considered to be authentically Japanese.
Contemporary Work
Contemporary ceramics and glassware were well
represented in the museum’s displays from the beginning. Brongniart’s aim was
to classify “the ceramic arts … of all places and all times,” and
such pieces were indispensable if he was to succeed in explaining “the
progress of the art” to its visitors. He was fascinated by technical
advances of all kinds, whatever their origin, and he opened the establishment’s
doors wide to the work of independent producers. As a result, the museum became
a window onto the most audacious and ingenious developments in the field in the
first half of the nineteenth century. To this end, Brongniart took advantage of
the Enquête des Préfets, a nationwide investigation into the ceramic arts (see
chap. 11), and the industrial exhibitions in Paris to cultivate relations with
other European producers and manufactories. During his European travels, he
also gathered objects that were appropriate to his goals for the museum.
Beginning in 1802, the pieces entering the collection reveal Brongniart’s taste
and preferences.
His
long-term fascination with English creamware and stoneware, which were
inexpensive and thus highly competitive, began soon after his arrival at
Sèvres. One of the first pieces to enter the collection after the 292 objects
of the 1786 Denon acquisition was a fine stoneware teapot, numbered 295 in the
inventory. It features white relief ornament against a black ground and was
probably acquired by Brongniart during his 1802 trip to England, although the
inventory does not confirm this. The same year, an imitation-bronze stoneware
goblet (MNC 316), made by Chanou at Sèvres, also entered the collection. It was
an “attempt to imitate English production,” as it was described in
the inventory, and further represents the technical ingenuity and imitative
skill so characteristic of the nineteenth century.
In
1800 the Institut de France, concerned about the many technical issues within
French industry, including the effects of sudden changes of temperature,
porosity, and the use of toxic lead glazes in ordinary French pottery, offered
a prize for the successful development of an inexpensive pottery that addressed
these issues. In 1801 the prize was awarded to the French scientist
Jacques Fourmy for a new material christened hygiocérame (from the Greek hygeia,
“health”), and in 1802 Brongniart added two examples of it (MNC 312
and 313) to the museum’s collection.
The Enquête des Préfets
This survey ultimately made a significant
contribution to the collections of the museum, but the prefects’ response to
Brongniart’s requests for materials was less than enthusiastic. After the
initial questionnaire campaign of 1806, Brongniart complained to the ministre de l’intérieur that only four
perfects had bothered to respond and those incompletely (deliveries were
supposed to include finished pieces and samples of the raw materials used in
their fabrication). Somewhat earlier, in 1802, however, Brongniart may have
obtained some fine stoneware (MNC 310, four pieces) produced by Bosc in Musigny
(Côte d’Or) through the survey. In 1804 he received some earthenware (MNC 324)
with delicate blue decoration from the Boch factory in Septfontaines as well as
two white earthenware vases (MNC 320) from the Creil factory. A fine piece of
stoneware (MNC 334) from the Utzschneider factory in Sarreguemines was in the
collection by 1806. During the brief period of Napoleonic conquest in the early
nineteenth century, France extended its boundaries considerably. As a result,
the prefect Chabrol was able to send some fine earthenware from Savona and
pottery from Albissola, while Merlet obliged with earthenware from Cologne.
By
the time the survey ended, hundreds of pieces had entered the collection. Most
were inventoried in 1808, assigned nos. 511 to 636 and nos. 639 to 661. Many of
these represented several objects sharing an inventory number.
The Industrial Products Exhibitions
The earliest exposition in France took place in
1798; two others followed in 1801 and 1802, and the third to be organized under
the Empire, in 1806, lasted twenty-four days and featured no fewer than 1,400
exhibitors. Subsequent political and military developments brought this
rush of enthusiasm to an end: it was not until 1819, during the reign of Louis XVIII,
that the next exhibition occurred. Thereafter, however, one was organized every
four years. These provided an incredible windfall for the museum, and an
enormous number of objects entered the museum directly from the exhibitions.
Beginning
with the 1823 exhibition, Brongniart consistently served as a member of the
jury. In a letter to the comte de Montalivet dated December 1833, he described
the priorities that shaped his judgment on these occasions. “The sole object of
these exhibitions,” he wrote, “is to draw the attention of the public and the
government to the factories and producers who have made real progress in their
art by producing quality work at the lowest possible price.” In his view,
then, it was not their primary purpose to honor unique showpieces produced at
extravagant cost. As he observed to Saint Cricq-Cazaux, a ceramics producer in
Creil, “the difficulty consists of making something as beautiful and fine as
possible at the lowest possible price.”
Brongniart
made notes during the exhibitions assessing the various products on display. He
was always curious about the quantities of pieces produced, the materials used
in their fabrication, the particulars of their firing, and the number of workers
used to produce them. He sometimes visited the warehouses in Paris to obtain
supplementary information.
At
the close of each exhibition, Brongniart sent letters to the exhibitors whose
work had impressed him with its quality and originality, requesting approval to
appropriate some of their pieces for the museum and specifying that, if they
agreed, the objects would be “placed prominently, dated, and labeled with
the name” of the producer. Exhibitors responded positively to these
requests.
The honor of being
represented at Sèvres could come at a price. Some of the pieces underwent a
variety of tests or were put into use before finding their way to the
showcases. The inventory informs us, for example, that two fine earthenware
plates (MNC 673) from the Creil factory “were subjected, the one to the action
of potassium hydrosulfide for half a day, the other to vinegar evaporation.” A
porcelain coffee jug (MNC 687) made by the Parisian producer Desprez was “used
daily for two years,” during which time it was “exposed to heaters and hearth
fires.” A refractory pottery crucible (MNC 808) from the
Lamontagne factory in Limoges was subjected to “the trial of feldspathic
fusion at high temperature in the porcelain kiln.” More prosaically, a
plate(MNC 1671) from Montereau “was used for two years at the table of Monsieur
Dumas, professor at the Royal Academy of Sciences.”
Many
manufacturers subsequently donated examples of technical developments at their
own initiative, independent of the exhibitions. In such cases Brongniart always
requested that they indicate the prices, for in his view “the judgment of
commercial objects must be based on price as well as quality.”
The
production of fine earthenware made from indigenous materials that would rival
English creamware was something of an obsession among all French manufacturers
during the early nineteenth century. In this domain, the intervention of Boudon
de Saint-Amans was decisive. In the course of several stays in England he had
become thoroughly acquainted with the processes used there, and in 1827
Brongniart allowed him to undertake some trials at Sèvres. The development
of transfer printing held out the promise of attractive, brightly colored
tableware for a large public. In the same period, decorative ewers and jewelry
caskets began to proliferate in many bourgeois households. The vitality of this
kind of production seemed limitless: encouraged by technical advances its
practitioners devised a steady stream of variations on old themes: which they
sincerely believed represented marked improvements.
Creamware,
or faïence fine, from Creil (Oise)
and Sarreguemines (Lorraine) was selected from the 1819 exhibition, as were
pieces of hygiocérame made by the
Parisian producer Desprez. Brongniart also singled out work realized by
François-Antoine Legros d’Anizy at Sèvres, specifically a porcelain plaque (MNC
705) decorated with figure compositions in muffle-fired colors and a Sèvres
porcelain plate (MNC 712) decorated with “a frieze of palmettes printed in gold
by the lithographic process.” Legros d’Anizy had also experimented with his
transfer-printing techniques on creamware produced in Creil, a sample of which
(MNC 713) was added to the collection.
Brongniart
was extremely interested in everything having to do with glazes, including
luster glazes. A Parisian craftsman named Girard had covered a hard-paste
porcelain lid (MNC 703) with a platinum ground glaze. Sèvres had set a
precedent in this regard by producing two vases
‘fuseau’ with platinum grounds as early as 1814. Ten pieces of faïence fine (MNC 671) from the
Utzschneider factory made with marbled paste or covered with a glossy black
glaze were also added to the museum’s collection.
The
most idiosyncratic pieces at the 1819 exhibition were made by the prolific
Boudon de Saint-Amans. Something of a ceramics polymath, at that time he was
interested in the fabrication of sulphides, a technique with which he
experimented at the Mont-Cenis crystal works near Creusot. Some of the results
entered the museum, namely a glass quoit inset with a painting on porcelain
imitating precious stones and several other pieces decorated with depictions of
famous people (MNC 694, 8 pieces).
Nast’s
productions exemplified the highest standards of the Parisian factories.
Brongniart singled out a white porcelain vase (MNC 688.1) with biscuit relief
ornament.
Donations
from the exhibitions were sometimes supplemented by purchases elsewhere to
increase the collection of modern pieces. Concerned about the quality of the
French products available to the public, Brongniart often made such purchases
on the open market, sometimes buying pieces without ornament or with the
simplest of decoration. A typical example is a cup (MNC 780) decorated with a
gold fillet, acquired in 1822 from an itinerant salesman in the park at
Saint-Cloud.
In 1821 Legros d’Anizy was
employed at the Sarreguemines factory, where he experimented with gold glazes
on faïence fine. He donated one of
these to Sèvres: a baluster vase, or vase
‘Medici’(MNC 770.1), entirely covered in gold.
The
1823 exhibition revealed the full creative genius of the ceramist François-Paul
Utzschneider, who had developed a technique for giving fine stoneware the
appearance of semiprecious stones and other materials. From his submissions
Brongniart selected two inkwells (MNC 809), one of them imitating porphyry and
the other petrified wood.
Although
eventually glassware was well represented in the collection, Brongniart began
to acquire it slowly. In 1819 the Chagot brothers, who were based in Creusot,
exhibited a masterly pair of candelabra with sixteen glass shades, but in
1823 Brongniart chose only a few crystal goblets (MNC 813) for the museum. He
selected similar pieces (MNC 814) from those placed on display by Godart of
Baccarat.
In
1824 Brongniart placed on exhibit at the museum the principal colors available
for painting on hard-paste porcelain made by Mortelèque (MNC842), a Parisian
chemist, as well as a plaque (MNC 843) bearing fired samples of the main colors
used at Sèvres.
In
1826 Boudon de Saint-Amans was in Creil carrying out experiments in hopes of
developing a fine stoneware “like that of the English.” His success is evident
in a variety of pieces (MNC 944.1); neoclassical in form, they are black with
spare relief ornament.
Fouque
of Toulouse is a small manufactory near Choisy and Creil, but nonetheless
examples of its plates (MNC 994) with printed decoration over much of their
surfaces, were selected for representation in the museum. Bureaux of Paris was
similarly honored for his submissions made of an opaque porcelain called faïence porcelaine (MNC 997), a new
variation of faïence fine. Brongniart
was also interested in the porcelains made with pure alumina and silica by
Guignet (MNC 1017 and 1018), whose factory was situated in Giez, near Aujon.
Andot of Septvieilles donated eight terracotta pieces (MNC 981) modeled with
the aid of a mechanical press.
The
first milk-glass also entered the museum’s collection in 1827 (MNC 966). These
objects were selected from the many flower vases and jewelry boxes made of the
material, some combining several colors, exhibited by the Bontemps factory in
Choisy-le-Roi. Paste, artificial pearls, and imitation gemstones produced by
Lançon of Septmoncel (Jura) and Bourguignon of Paris were also deemed worthy of
the museum(MNC 1035 and 1036).
In
1828 a factory at Bercy on the outskirts of Paris donated several examples of
their production. In addition to a set of crystal glasses of sturdy but elegant
form, it presented a mantelpiece vase made to resemble red marbled stone (MNC
1070) as well as many decorative decanters and jewelry caskets of various
colors. Of greater significance, however, the factory also sent the first
pieces of imitation cut glass produced with a metal pressure mold (MNC1069). In
1829 the Creil factory revealed an Asian influence in their production when
they donated a cooler made of fine paste, of a yellow color called “Nankin,”
decorated with painted flowers in earth tones (MNC II49.2).
Charles
de Bourgoing, who was secretary of the French delegation to Saint Petersburg,
registered a patent for the production of lithophanes in 1826 and worked to
further their development at Montreuil-sous-Bois. In 1828 the Société
d’Encouragement awarded him a bronze medal for the invention. Several of his
efforts entered the museum the following year (MNC 1157). He and Baron
Alexis du Tremblay went into partnership in 1827, opening a factory at
Rubelles, but production did not get underway until 1838-39.
In
1830 Brongniart became interested in molded glass decanters shaped like
tortoises, bouquets of flowers, and even the Fontaine des Innocents in Paris.
He acquired several examples (MNC 1317) directly from one “M. Blottière, maître-faîencier in Paris,” who claimed
to have originated the idea, but the pieces had been produced at the factory in
Landel in 1830.
Experiments
conducted in 1817 by Saint-Amans at Sèvres led to the development of a new
material: opaque porcelain. An improved version of faïence fine, it was made
with nontranslucent kaolin paste. Possessed of the nontoxic qualities so
enthusiastically endorsed by the Institut, it was soon adopted by other
producers, and it triumphed at the 1834 exhibition. In addition to fine
earthenware and stoneware, the Creil factory donated some specimens of faïence fine covered with
transfer-printed “Chino-English” motifs (MNC 1667). The Sarreguemines factory
again distinguished itself with stoneware of high quality, this time with
colored paste decoration (MNC 1681).
In
1836 the Montereau factory experimented with the application of red pigments on
opaque porcelain by means of transfer printing. Among these colors were a
stannous chrome red glaze called “pink-color,” a red prepared in the Sèvres
laboratories by Malagutti. An “English” red provided in 1805 by the
Tournai-based producer Bettignies, and another developed by Gratien Milliet,
the director of Montereau, were also used. The museum received an example of
each attempt (MNC 2002).
Additional
innovations were introduced by master glassmakers, such as Bontemps of the
Choisy-le-Roi works and Godart of Baccarat. They presented pieces with
pressure-molded decoration resembling diamond cutting (MNC 1725). Some of the
Baccarat pieces featured arabesque motifs in relief set against rough-grained
grounds (MNC 1717). Seiler of the Saint-Louis glassworks presented an array of
similar objects, some of which found a place in the museum’s collection (MNC
1718). The imaginative work of Jacob Petit, a porcelain maker, was admired by
Brongniart, and many bibelots produced by him also became part of Sèvres’s
collection (MNC 1589 and 1695).
Also
in 1836 several examples of glasses produced by the baron de Klinglin in
collaboration with the Sèvres painting-on-glass workshop (see chap. 7) entered
the collection (MNC 2021); some of them were painted by Louis Robert, who
headed the workshop from 1839 to 1854. Another glass (MNC 2722.6), this one
with flat sides and made to resemble agate, was donated by Seiler of the
Saint-Louis glassworks.
A
professor named Chevreuse, who had previously taught chemistry at the school of
artillery engineering in Metz, had established a factory in nearby Bordes for
the production of tiles that looked like slate. In 1838 he proudly donated
three samples, which had been hollowed in a way devised by him to prevent
warpage, or “the buckling caused by firing.” At that date, however, he was
still having difficulty producing a uniform slate color economically.
A
porcelain maker named Halot, in an attempt to reduce production costs, began to
use a decorative process developed by Noualhier whereby the ground color was
brushed on the porcelain by hand before the high-temperature firing. To
document his efforts, he donated several pieces, including a small brownish
coffee cup with a faceted body (MNC 2519.3).
At
the 1839 exhibition, the ceramist Utzschneider presented several objects of
unusual sophistication. Brongniart succeeded in obtaining one of these baluster
vases made of stoneware resembling jasper with inlaid decoration consisting of
a reddish paste (MNC 2686.1). After it was fired, the piece had been polished
on a lapidary lathe. David Johnston, director of a newly established
factory in Bordeaux, donated some imaginative stoneware designs made from paste
of various colors, including a teapot in the shape of a beehive (MNC 2683.2).
Discry, a Parisian porcelain maker, displayed pieces with blue decoration under
immersion glazes that were greatly admired and were duly solicited for the
collection (MNC 2700.5). Du Tremblay contributed several enamel wall tiles (MNC
2701) from the new Rubelles factory, which he had launched in partnership with
Bourgoing.
The
1830s saw many technological advances in the field of ceramics production at
Sèvres, and in the ensuing decade a new generation of manufacturers was able to
survive on this remarkable inheritance often without pursuing comparable
initiatives of its own. Especially noteworthy were the submissions of Bonnet of
Apt, who produced faïence fine from a
marbled paste that could be used for delicate relief work (MNC 3024,entered the
collection in 1842). Ziegler donated a large number of stoneware pieces of
Moorish and Gothic Revival inspiration in 1842, all produced in his factory in
Voisinlieu. In 1844 Creil presented objects made of a new ceramic
material, a hard earthenware called pétrocérame
(MNC3325), and that same year Gosse sent cups “made of reinforced porcelain for
use by café-keepers.”
Glassmakers
continued to experiment with color in hopes of renewing their decorative
vocabulary, looking to Venice for guidance. After the 1839 exhibition at the
Louvre, a glass with a stem resembling a twisted cord, made by Bontemps, was
accessioned by the museum. A year later Bontemps sent a water jug whose entire
surface was covered with filigree work, and in 1843 Nocus and Bredghem of the
Saint-Mandé glassworks donated a stemmed cup (MNC 3079) whose thin walls were
also decorated with filigree. At the 1844 exhibition Bontemps exhibited a
goblet made of millefiori (MNC 3555.1), and in 1846 Seiler of the Saint-Louis
works donated another millefiori piece (MNC 3637). Baccarat followed suit by
presenting an elegant ewer decorated with blue and white filigree (MNC 3727).
Exchanges with Foreign Manufactories
Brongniart had no intention of allowing
France’s borders to limit the museum’s assembly of contemporary ceramic and
glass production. From the beginning, he established working relationships with
other European manufactories to facilitate exchanges. The cooperation of these
establishments was contingent upon favorable political circumstances, but
overall they proved extremely worthwhile, resulting in the museum’s acquisition
of some remarkable pieces. A spirit of scientific enquiry was to govern the
exchanges. As in the Enquête des Préfets, the participants were asked to fill
out a questionnaire prepared by Brongniart. The transactions involved both
finished work and raw materials.
In December 1805 Brongniart
submitted to the Vienna manufactory a set of twenty-six questions about their
sources of kaolin, procedures for cleaning it, the grinding of feldspar, the
preparation of clay for saggars, the wood fuel used, the composition of the
pastes, glazes, and colors, techniques for making relief ornament in gold and
other materials, and the problems usually encountered with painted and gilded
decoration. He also requested drawings of kilns, samples of all colors in raw
and fired states, and information about payroll management (he wanted to know
whether they paid their workers by the day).
Although
some manufactories, such as Meissen, were not receptive to such invasive
inquiry, others, such as the manufactory at Vienna, responded cordially.
To some extent, this may have been influenced by Brongniart’s previous
demonstration of good faith. In 1804 through chevalier Landriani, he had sent
two samples of metallic oxide to Vienna for use in preparing a rose porcelain
glaze. Perhaps because of this, Matthias Niedermayer, director of the
Vienna manufactory, obligingly answered Brongniart’s questionnaire and,
beginning in July 1806, sent two deliveries. The first consisted of raw
materials, namely clay samples, and the second contained twenty pieces of
Vienna porcelain. He also complied with Brongniart’s request for samples,
sending enamels and metallic lusters used in the manufactory’s workshops (MNC
470.20). The shipment also contained a painting on a porcelain plaque by Joseph
Nigg (MNC 470.18) after a flower painting by Van Huysum, some small coffee cups
(MNC 470.1 and 470.2) showing Middle Eastern influence, a few flawed blanks,
and two cups and saucers, one with ultramarine grounds and silver decoration
and the other with a new yellow-orange ground. Sèvres reciprocated in 1808
with a delivery of sixteen pieces, among them a small vase with a glost-fired
black ground and Chinese decoration, a cup with a green ground color that had a
low luster, a soup cup on which all of Sèvres’s available colors and gilding
were systematically displayed, and several cups painted by Sèvres’s best
painters: Jacquotot, Drouet, and Swebach. Some thirty years later, in
1838, Baumgartner, the director of the Vienna factory, sent more pieces and
another set of samples of the colors and metallic lusters used there (MNC
2517).
In
November 1805 Brongniart met Friedrich Philipp Rosenstiel, who was director of
the Berlin manufactory from 1802 to 1832 and had come to Paris to present some
vases being given to the empress Josephine by Luise, queen of Prussia. In
late December 1805 Brongniart prepared a few pieces for Rosenstiel in
reciprocation for those that had been presented to Sèvres. This was not
the end of the exchange, however, for early in 1806 Rosenstiel sent a case
containing fifteen pieces made in Berlin. The delivery included several
cups and saucers (MNC 492.2) painted to resemble pietra dura, a superb conical cup decorated with an Egyptian
landscape set against an imitation mosaic ground, with a gilded interior (MNC
492.5), a cup and saucer with gold and silver decoration, several soft-paste
pieces, and some examples of hygioceramics.
In
November 1808, thanks to the efforts of “M. Schwerin, member of the Central
Council of Bavarian Mines,” Brongniart received samples of raw materials and
completed pieces from the manufactory in Nymphenburg. Of the twenty-eight
objects in this delivery, the most notable were a cup and saucer (MNC 486.9)
decorated with baskets of flowers signed “Reis,” a cup (MNC 486.7) with
glost-fired black ground decorated with a gold frieze, several cups (MNC
486.11, 486.12, 486.13) bearing medallion portraits of members of the Bavarian
royal family, some biscuit pieces and even a paperweight shaped like a sphinx
and covered with a copper luster.
By
contrast, Brongniart’s requests were little appreciated by the Meissen
porcelain manufactory. Annoyed by the terse reply from the manufactory, he
wrote to the Intendant Général, observing that “the secret of porcelain amounts
to nothing now that it is general knowledge.” He refused to admit defeat
and rerouted his request through Steinhauer, the minister of Saxony. This
strategy proved successful, and the eagerly awaited delivery arrived in early
January 1809. It included samples of kaolin and clay for saggars as well
as a total of twenty-three pieces of glazed and biscuit porcelain, many of them
dating to the late eighteenth century. Several of the cups (MNC 469.15) were
decorated only with sprays of flowers or flowered wreaths, maximizing the
effect produced by the brilliant white paste. A hot-chocolate cup featured a
novel dark brown ground with a mosaic decoration, and two other chalice cups
(MNC 469.16, 469.17) had handles resembling coiled snakes.
From
the Fürstenberg manufactory, Brongniart received a delivery in 1807 consisting
of several cups with glost-fired blue grounds and an impressive assortment of
seventy-six biscuit busts of Greek, French, and German philosophers, Roman
emperors, mythological heroes, and reigning European monarchs and emperors as
well as Johann Winckelmann, Henri Le Léon, and Anton Mengs, among others. At
the conclusion of the Treaty of Vienna (1814), the duchy of Brunswick sought
reparation for the seizure of these goods. When Captain Mahner,
Brunswick’s representative, came to Sèvres, Brongniart made a point of
explaining to him the disinterested nature of the exchanges, but he also made
it clear that he would readily surrender most of the busts, for in fact they
had taught him nothing. In the end he retained eight of them.
Initiating
exchanges with Russia required much more effort and patience on Brongniart’ s
part. In 1810 he had made known his intentions directly to Prince Alexei
Kuratin when the latter visited the Sèvres manufactory, but nothing came of
this. In 1824 Brongniart sent a detailed request to the administration of the
imperial manufactory in Saint Petersburg and was sent some clay samples but
nothing more. In September 1830 the secretary of the French embassy to
Russia, Charles de Bourgoing, sent Sèvres a few pieces from the Poskachina
factory as well as some vases, teapots, cups, and white porcelain from the
Saint Petersburg manufactory. In 1837 Brongniart wrote directly to Baron
Meyendorf, advisor to the Russian state, asking that he arrange for the
delivery of some recent productions of the Saint Petersburg manufactory.
Brongniart noted that during a visit to Potsdam he had seen some of its vases
in a palace and been impressed by their high quality. Nine objects from
Saint Petersburg finally arrived in 1839, notably a vase (MNC 2815.1) with a
glost-fired blue ground and gold decoration, a plate (MNC 2815.3) with a
landscape painted by Pierre Stechetine after a composition by Moucheron as well
as a gold frieze in relief on its rim, and an inkwell (MNC 2815 .17) in the
form of a shell and two pieces of coral. Brongniart’s difficulties were not yet
at an end, however, as he was severely reprimanded by the Intendant Général for
having negotiated directly with Russia without going through appropriate
channels. An official named de Wailly of the intendant’s office chided him with the statement, “relations
with the Russian court are so very delicate….”
Brongniart as Collector
Brongniart, as a mineralogist and the director
of the preeminent porcelain manufactory, was very much at ease with the
technological ferment of the first half of the nineteenth century. Wanting to
investigate new processes and mechanical inventions that interested him
first-hand, he became an avid European traveler, beginning with an 1802 trip to
England. The fact that many directors of European porcelain-producing
establishments, especially in Germany, were either also mineralogists or
affiliated with the mining industry tended to work in his favor, making them
more receptive to his requests for access, information, and samples.
Brongniart also attended scientific congresses, never forgetting the museum and
always doing his best to gather suitable objects for the collection.
On
these trips Brongniart made extensive records of everything that interested
him. Paste-making materials, the number of pieces per firing, retail prices,
the size of the staff needed for various fabrication processes were all duly
noted. He also made sketches of tools, kilns, and innovations and was equally
curious about everything pertaining to the history of the manufactories that he
visited.
In
1812 Brongniart left for the German duchies and principalities. His primary
purpose was to learn about firing processes used in Berlin – “very
different from those at Sèvres – as well as about kilns in Bohemia that
ostensibly used less fuel. At Meissen, thanks to the cooperation of its
director, Count Camille Marcolini, Brongniart was able to visit the workshops
and kilns.
In
1820 on a tour of Italy, Brongniart obtained a porcelain plate (MNC
730.1)decorated with a plum-tree branch, which had been produced at the Ginori
factory in Doccia. He also brought back some fine earthenware from Vicenza and
Le Nove. He was interested in soft-paste porcelain produced by the Cozzi
factory in Venice, which had closed eight years earlier, and acquired a sample
(MNC 764).
In
1824 Berzelius, the secretary of the Academy of Sciences in Stockholm, invited
Brongniart to Sweden. While en route he visited the royal manufactory in
Copenhagen, where he selected fourteen pieces of hard-paste porcelain (MNC
834), mostly decorated with twigs painted in blue underglaze colors. In Denmark
he obtained some black pottery (MNC 832) given a high luster by burnishing and
some glazed pottery (MNC 833) from the island of Bornholm. At the Rörstrand
factory in Sweden, he chose fourteen pieces of fine earthenware exemplifying
the range of ground colors used there. It was probably also in Sweden that he
found eight pieces of stoneware (MNC 872)identified as having been produced in “Helsinborg
in Scania” as well as three small refractory pottery crucibles (MNC 873)
intended for use by goldsmiths.
Invited
to a “gathering of all the scientists in Germany” scheduled to begin in Bonn on
September 16, 1835, Brongniart planned to visit Strasbourg, Mayence, and
Stuttgart as well as to make a brief quick trip to Holland. He also took
advantage of the opportunity to visit large-scale operations like those of
Boch-Buschmann in Mettlach and Utzschneider in Sarreguemines (Lorraine). In all
likelihood, it was this stopover at Sarrequemines that prompted Utzschneider to
donate to the museum another precious Medici form vase (MNC 1945.2) made from
paste resembling granite that had been cut and polished on a lapidary lathe as
well as a pair of candelabra torcheres (MNC 1936.13) entirely covered with gold
luster. The Boch-Buschmann firm was generous as well, adding to the collection
a twenty-piece creamware service with transfer-printed decoration (MNC 1941).
Brongniart made many
purchases in Frankfurt and Bonn, especially Bohemian glassware, whose rich
colors were the envy of French producers. A cordial meeting with a man named
Steigerwald, the brother of the director of the Hayda glassworks in
Bohemia, resulted in another donation of Bohemian glass. A purplish red
champagne glass (MNC 1982.1), a chalice glass (MNC 1922.9) in a delicate shade
of rose, and an amethyst-colored decanter (MNC 1982.6) were sent to Sèvres,
along with several trays (MNC 1978) decorated with a variety of cut patterns.
While
in Frankfurt, he acquired a plate (MNC 1969) with the ridged decoration typical
of recent Meissen work. In Bonn, he found a teacup (MNC 1970) produced at the
Gotha factory decorated with a view of Bonn within a reserve as well as a cup
and saucer (MNC 1972.5) from Ravenstein decorated with purple “Chinese” motifs.
In
1836 Brongniart decided to visit London and Staffordshire with return trips
through Berlin, Dresden, Bohemia, and Bavaria. On arriving in London, he
was received at the Royal Society and obtained letters of recommendation from
many of its scientist members prior to visiting the Staffordshire ceramic
factories. He also stopped at “most of the porcelain, earthenware, and
stoneware shops” in the capital “to get an idea of the character of the
products.” Accompanied by the Reverend W. Buckland, a professor of mineralogy
and geology, he went to examine the Worcester porcelain factory. Thomas
Grainger gave him some samples of raw materials used in his factory, which
Brongniart found to be particularly interesting because they confirmed the
English use of crushed bone in their paste. En route to Birmingham he took a
side trip to Stonebridge to see its stoneware factory. In Derby, at the Wood
factory in Burslem, he was amazed by the large quantities of ware
produced. Back in London, he made several purchases intended for the
collection: six Wedgwood creamware plates(MNC 2139.7), a Davenport plate (MNC
2151) with an “Indian decoration in green and pink-colour,” and several
Davenport cut crystal glasses (MNC 2260 and 2259), which were sometimes tinted.
Returning
to the Continent, Brongniart proceeded to the Fürstenberg factory to examine
recent advances made there. From there he traveled to Berlin, where, guided by
von Humboldt and warmly received by Christoph Georg Frick, director of the
Royal Porcelain Manufactory, he made a large selection of porcelain for the
museum: forty-eight pieces, including tableware – notably a saucer with stamped
heart motifs against a gray glaze-fired ground – visiting a factory near Berlin
that produced hygioceramics.
The
next stop on Brongniart’s itinerary was Meissen, where he met with Kühn, the
director of the manufactory and also a mining engineer. There he was able to
examine the new jigging machines for the shaping of plates.
In
Dresden he was accompanied by Klemm, the curator, through the Palais Japonais,
and he paid an extended visit to the Messerschmidt pottery and stove factory.
He acquired a few pieces of utilitarian pottery made by local craftsmen near
Pirna. In Silesia he made a stop at the Carlstahl factory, where he obtained
several cut glass goblets as well as a test tube (MNC 2175.1) about 19 3/4
inches high (50 cm).
In
the environs of Carlsbad he found many porcelain and earthenware factories. The
former were of special interest because they produced porcelain without using
feldspar. In Elbogen he chose to visit the factory run by the Haïdinger
brothers, where he obtained several pieces, notably a small deep-blue coffee
cup (MNC 2249.16). While in Hammer he visited the factory operated by
Fischer, a fellow mineralogist and geologist, and acquired a small
octagonal tray (MNC 2250.5) for playing Boston, a card game that was popular at
the time.
In
Ratisbonne, he selected for the museum a hot-chocolate cup (MNC 2259.19) on
three claw feet and decorated with a view of the principal church of the city
from the Schwerdtner factory.
He
remained longer in Munich, where he toured the Nymphenburg porcelain factory
accompanied by Schmitz. He managed to obtain samples of its raw materials,
but the high point of the visit was the local porcelain, earthenware, and
pottery fair. In a letter to Sèvres, he noted that ceramic production was “often
quite bizarre in this part of Germany,” continuing with manifest satisfaction: “you
can imagine what a harvest I gathered.”
Scientists as Collectors
These acquisitions were not sufficient to fill
the museum’s showcases, and they certainly did not quench Brongniart’s
curiosity. He was always seeking individuals who shared his interests, and he
found many natural allies among those who taught the sciences. Mieg, a
professor of chemistry and physics in Madrid, for example, was especially energetic
on Sèvres’s behalf. He collected a considerable number of objects from all over
Spain for the museum. In addition to earthenware and pottery from Valencia,
Alcora, and Talavera de la Reyna, he sent examples of glazed pottery (MNC 1091
- 1113) from Andalucia and Estramadura, and he also arranged for the royal
manufactory at Moncloa to deliver some pieces (MNC 1116 and 1118), which were
produced, “like opaque French porcelain,” with “kaolin clay from Galapagar.” In
1834 Wöhler, a professor of chemistry in Kassel, arranged for the delivery of
samples of local ceramics production, including terracotta architectural
ornaments (MNC 1743).
Brongniart
solicited the aid of a professor of chemistry named Walter, who was in Cracow,
to obtain examples from that area of eastern Europe, which was not yet
represented in the collection. In 1841 Walter sent thirty-four pieces of
earthenware, ordinary pottery, and glassware that he had obtained in Cieszyn,
Lublin, Frywald, and many other localities. From Krasnoyarsk in 1844, a
professor of chemistry named Hann, at the Polytechnic School in Warsaw, sent a
goblet (MNC 3399) made of dark blue glass and two small glass burettes (MNC
3400) for applying oil.
The United States
In 1826 Brongniart received a delivery of
materials from the United States, sent by Chanou. This superb gift included
“white clay suitable for the fabrication of saggars found at Cape Hope in
Massachusetts, clay for the fabrication of stoneware from South Amboy, New
Jersey, materials for the production of earthenware from Burlington County, New
Jersey, clay for ordinary pottery from Chester, Pennsylvania, etc.” Also
included were some porcelain blanks (MNC 911) made in New York with local
materials by Ducasse and Chanou himself. To complete this part of the museum’s
collection, Brongniart appealed to a former student named Ducatel, who had
studied the basics of mineralogy at the Collège Duplessis. In 1836
Ducatel, who was by then teaching chemistry in Baltimore, sent his former
professor six cases overflowing with raw materials and finished pieces.
The
first case contained red bricks made with a presser; Ducatel apologized for
having been unable to obtain the design of the machine, known as “Willard’s
Patent Brick Presser.” The second case contained refractory bricks that, by his
report, were “considered superior to the English bricks from Stourbridge.” The
third case contained various stoneware articles, such as a gallon jar, a quart
jar, and a cider jug. The fourth case was completely filled by a large stoneware
cask intended for use in taverns (capacity 43 gallons). The fifth case
contained chamber pots, flower vases, coffee pots, jugs of various kinds, and
some hospital bedpans. The sixth case contained window glass; all attempts to
produce glassware and crystal in Baltimore, however, had failed.
In
1836, Brongniart sent a letter to a professor of chemistry named Silliman at
Yale University, describing his goals for the Sèvres museum and asking him to
collect whatever objects he could for the collection and to encourage others to
do the same. Silliman decided that the most efficient way to handle Brongniart’s
request would be to publish excerpts from his letter; these appeared in the
October issue of The American Journal.
As for Silliman himself, he sent some examples of hard-paste porcelain made in
Philadelphia (MNC 2422).
In
a letter dated January 6, 1837 to a mineralogist named Keating in Philadelphia,
Brongniart hinted at a certain resignation and moderated his demands. Opting
for realism in the face of the vastness of the American territory, he said he
would content himself with information about “the most notable [ceramics
factories] in the northern and southern United States.”
Historical Pieces
For a quarter of a century
the growing collection of the Sèvres museum corresponded quite closely to the
program described by Brongniart in his letter of 10 thermidor year 9 (July 30,
1802) to the ministre de l’intérieur.
The two principal elements of the collection were, at that early date, an
ensemble of antique vases and another of far eastern productions. Its originality
resided in its presentation of modern porcelain of prestigious provenance but
also, and above all, in that of ordinary pottery.
During
the time of Brongniart’s early education, neoclassicism had been the dominant
aesthetic expression and the rococo had become outdated. This background later
may have made him insensitive to the charms of the rococo and often indifferent
to the qualities of earlier European productions. Historical pieces, however,
gradually entered the collection, not on the basis of their various aesthetic
merit but rather as evidence of the evolution of technical processes.
Brongniart’s
acquisition policies as well echoed tendencies then pervasive in French
culture. The development of the Louvre’s collection after the end of the Empire
indicates a renewal of interest in indigenous production. In 1824 the first
Durand collection was acquired by the Louvre in its entirety for the sum of
480,000 francs. It consisted of many ancient pieces; the second installment of
the sale consisted of some 97 pieces of Italian earthenware, 114 objects
attributed to Bernard Palissy, some Limoges enamels, and some stained-glass
windows.
In
1828 Charles X authorized the Louvre to acquire the collection of the painter
Pierre Révoil, which consisted largely of medieval and Renaissance artifacts.
In addition to plates and other glazed pieces attributed to Palissy, it also
boasted some examples of the richly inlaid “Henri II” earthenware that
significantly enriched the museum’s collection. In the nineteenth century
there was a tendency to consider any French enameled platter or other pottery
artifact with relief elements to be products of the workshop of Bernard
Palissy. Works by him, or in the style associated with him, were quite popular
at the time, largely due to the continuing interest in his writings.
As
for what was then known as “Henri II” earthenware (now attributed to
Saint-Porchaire), its origins were unknown, a fact that, coupled with its
manifest quality, surrounded it with an intriguing aura of mystery. It was both
fragile and rare, which meant that the few extant copies were especially
coveted by collectors. As early as 1812, Héricart de Thury, an inspector of
mines and member of the Académie Royale des Sciences, donated a Limoge enamel
plate painted by Suzanne Court (MNC 348).
At
the Denon sale of 1827 Brongniart acquired a large oval platter (MNC 965-1) by
Bernard Palissy decorated with fish and reptiles. In 1829 he made two
purchases from the dealer Leblanc: a superb Niderviller platter (MNC 1126)
bearing the factory’s mark on the bottom and decorated with a composition of
shepherds in a rustic landscape, and a large Flemish beaker (MNC 1128)
decorated with lion heads which he thought to be of Venetian origin.
The
provenance of six pieces of majolica (MNC 738 - 743) that entered the
collection in 1820 is not clearly documented, but it seems likely that they
were obtained by Brongniart during a trip to Italy. Consisting of four plates,
a bowl, and a salt cellar entirely covered with figural decoration, they
exemplify the virtuosic istoriato
pottery for which Urbino was famous.
The
first piece of soft-paste porcelain to enter the collection (MNC 651), a
figurine of a Chinese man in a long polychrome robe, was acquired in 1812 as a donation
from Brongniart’s mother. It was produced at the Mennecy factory, but the
inventory attributed it to Saint-Cloud. In 1824 a former painter at the
manufactory named Caron, who was the son of a potter at the Saint-Cloud
factory, donated two objects produced at Saint-Cloud: a large earthenware jug
(MNC 867) decorated with a blue floral motif and a small soft-paste cup and
saucer (MNC 868) decorated with a lambrequin decoration.
Exchanges between 1829 and 1833
Brongniart significantly
enlarged the collection’s historical holdings through exchanges made with four
dealers: Hairon, Vachée, Collot, and Toppi. Negotiated between 1829 and 1833,
these acquisitions included ancient pottery, Chinese pieces, and some Nevers
plates thought to be of Persian origin. They were obtained in exchange for
pieces of eighteenth-century Sèvres soft-paste porcelain that were duplicates
or, more often, were flawed. Brongniart obtained several other pieces–notably
a round Palissy platter, a Limoges enamel cup, and an Etruscan sarcophagus–at
some cost to himself, ceding in exchange twelve white plates and two fruit
bowls from his personal service as well as two small rectangular trays from his
office. The same agreement called for the delivery of 400 round lids from the
manufactory’s inventory.
Transactions
effected in 1829 with Vachée resulted in the acquisition of an albarello
(MNC 1183; exchange of September 23, 1829) decorated with a man’s profile made
by Masseot Abaquesne as well as a Nevers flask (MNC 1167, exchange of August 4,
1829) with grips shaped like ibexes and decorated with figures on two sides.
Two Delft plates with characteristic cobalt blue figures (MNC 1193, exchange of
September 23, 1829) also entered the collection, preceded by a mother and child
figure (MNC 1165, exchange of August 4, 1829) from the Avon factory. An
exchange with Hairon brought to the collection a small German bottle (MNC 1169,
exchange of August 12, 1829) of white glass decorated with cobblers’s
attributes.
Between
1830 and 1833 several exchanges negotiated with Toppi resulted in various
acquisitions: a remarkable Delft tray (MNC 1266, exchange of May 27, 1830)
shaped like a shell, a large lobed platter (MNC 1379, exchange of October 11,
1831), from Rouen decorated with cornucopias, and a wine cooler (MNC 1477
exchange of July 9, 1832) decorated with Chinese fishermen from Strasbourg. The
most significant gains for the museum, however, were in the domain of
eighteenth-century French porcelain. These included a small wine cooler (MNC
1278, exchange of June 15, 1830) decorated with polychrome bouquets from the
Chantilly factory, another wine cooler (MNC 1303, exchange of June 15, 1830)
with flowering branches in relief from Saint-Cloud, and a small Chantilly
spitoon (MNC 1416, exchange of March 15, 1832) decorated with dragon motifs.
As
for the exchange with Collot, it resulted in the acquisition of the museum’s
first Moustiers platter (MNC 1524). This piece was decorated with a tiger hunt
after a composition by Antonio Tempesta.
Subsequent Acquisitions
Majolica
Italian majolica was much admired in this period; it
was the first earthenware to be represented in the collection, and Brongniart
continued to acquire it throughout his tenure. When traveling, he did not content
himself with inspecting factories and acquiring contemporary pieces but also
sought to obtain older objects from dealers at reasonable prices. In Nuremberg,
for example, he bought six pieces (MNC 2109 - 2112 and MNC 2132); one was a
plate made in the Urbino workshops and the others were Faenza work with
a berettino or
a compendiario decoration. At an auction held in 1837, he acquired
five pieces (MNC 2470) decorated in the luster technique produced at the Gubbio
and Deruta workshops, which were previously unrepresented in the collection.
One of these (2470.1) bore the mark of Maestro Giorgio on the bottom. In
1838 at another auction, he acquired a gadrooned bowl (MNC 2489) with a
quartieri ornament whose well was
decorated with an image of Saint Sebastian as well as a large Castelli platter
(MNC 2487) decorated with a battle scene. This factory was to be well
represented in the collection thanks to a donation made in 1840 by the duc de
Luynes. Consisting of twelve pieces for domestic use (MNC 2905 and 2906), such
as cups and a sugar bowl, as well as ten plaques, it offered a representative
sample of Castelli’s eighteenth-century production. Lucca della Robbia was as
celebrated and well known in nineteenth-century France as Bernard Palissy. A
tabernacle (MNC 3108) made by him was acquired for the museum in 1843 at the
Didier-Petit sale.
Delft Wares
Delft earthenware was absent from the collection
prior to the Vachée exchanges of 1829. During his 1835 trip to Holland
Brongniart hoped to obtain additional pieces of high quality, but at prices
lower than those current in France. To his great surprise, the best old
pieces were to be had not in Delft but in The Hague. He acquired twelve objects
in all, notably an earthenware vase (MNC 1931.7) decorated with peonies in the
style of
famille rose, a water pot
(MNC 1931.8) completely covered with landscape motifs, and a box (MNC 1931.9)
shaped like a bunch of grapes. The following year in Nuremberg he added to the
collection a gadrooned teapot (MNC 2131) decorated with a large floral motif.
German Wares
It was some time before German earthenware was adequately
represented in the collection. Brongniart’s first interest was fine German
stoneware. In 1829 he acquired two jugs (MNC 1055 and 1056) from Leblanc, one
of which featured characteristic relief ornament heightened in violet. In
Nuremberg, many dealers sold wares in the public squares, and there Brongniart
purchased four glazed stove tiles for much less than he would have had to pay
in Paris. He also found a jug (MNC 2119) decorated with an openwork star
(illustrated in the
Description
méthodique du musée céramique) and a draining plate (MNC 2123) bearing
the mark of Höchst on the bottom.
English Wares
Boudon de Saint-Amans donated a quantity of
contemporary English creamware and stoneware to the museum which was also
indebted to him for several earlier English pieces. In 1820 he presented a
small sulphur-yellow cup (MNC 760) from Burslem decorated with a printed
quatrain, and in 1830 a Staffordshire creamware fruit bowl (MNC 1050) decorated
with a cross-bar openwork pattern. That same year he also donated a coffee cup
(MNC 1243) dating from the first half of the eighteenth century decorated with
reliefs of strawberries and cabbage leaves. Brongniart’s trips abroad proved
crucial in this domain. In The Hague he found several old pieces, notably a
ravishing marbled teapot (MNC 2001) in the form of a shell. In 1836 he was
surprised to learn that “old” Wood had established a museum. From this
collection he obtained a Wedgwood creamware plaque (MNC 2136) decorated with a
relief depicting a stork drinking at a fountain, as well as a coffee pot (MNC
2138) from the Daniel Bold factory decorated with gilded in-glaze letters.
In London Brongniart purchased some early English soft-paste porcelain
including an oval Chelsea goblet (MNC 2174.3) decorated with floral bouquets in
the style of Meissen. Albert Way, secretary of the London Society of
Antiquarians, expanded this part of the collection in 1843 and 1844, when he
donated several pieces of soft-paste porcelain from Chelsea and Worcester (MNC
3212, 3213, 3457-3459).
Spanish Wares
The Carlist Wars caused havoc in Spain. Church
properties as well as countless art objects were confiscated by the government
and sold at auction. Between 1835 and 1837 Baron Taylor was able to take
advantage of these circumstances. He was in charge of assembling a collection
of Spanish paintings for Louis-Philippe, and he also obtained objects for
Sèvres. These included floor tiles from such prestigious sites as the Alcazar
Palace in Toledo (MNC 2382) and the Monastery of San Francesco in Barcelona
(MNC 2381), which was slated for demolition. The large Hispano-Moresque
platters so admired by Brongniart, however, were not represented in the
museum’s collection until 1843, when two examples were acquired at the Didier-Petit
sale. One bore the emblem of Blanche of Navarre (MNC 3107.1) and the other
that of Castille (3107.2).
French Wares
Many items attributed to Bernard Palissy figured in
the dealer exchange agreements of 1829 – 33. Brongniart regarded such
attributions with circumspection. A reading of Palissy’s writings had alerted
him to the discrepancy between the reality and the myth of the famous potter’s
achievement, and in the
Traité des arts
céramiques Brongniart went so far as to maintain that he had learned
nothing about pottery-making and enamel technique from these texts.
In
1843 he acquired a Palissy platter (MNC 3145) from the antiquarian Beurdeley
for the sum of 500 francs, but the following year he refused a similar piece on
the grounds that it was not by Palissy.
The
high prices of “Henri II” ware had long placed it out of Brongniart’s reach. In
1837, however, an exchange agreement with the seasoned collector Préaux netted
the museum two such pieces, a basin cup (MNC 2447-1) with the pendant necklace
of the Order of the Holy-Spirit depicted on its interior as well as a broken
lid (2447-2).
With
respect to Rouen earthenware, Brongniart had the extraordinary luck to discover
a fountain and matching basin with lambrequin decoration (MNC 1564) in a shop
in Gisors, in Normandy; he acquired it for twelve francs. In 1837 he visited
the factory of Amédée Lambert, on which occasion the producer gave him four
pieces of old Rouen pottery (MNC 2437): an octagonal wine cooler with
lambrequin ornament (subsequently determined to be from Lille), a tray with a
similar decoration, a patronymic jug, and a plate decorated with polychrome
flowers. That same year, Garneray, the former director of the museum in Rouen,
sold Brongniart thirteen pieces made in that center of pottery production for
forty-six francs. Many were decorated with the cornucopias typical of such
wares, but they also included a large segmented vase (again, subsequently
determined to be from Lille), two plates, and a large platter (MNC 2469)
decorated with blue lambrequins highlighted in iron red. It was Riocreux who,
in 1843, donated the first piece of blue Rouen ware (MNC 3130), described by
him as “violet earthenware by Louis Poterat.”
In
1832 Brongniart acquired from the print dealer Valardi a yellow and green
glazed plate (MNC 1413) from the Beauvais region with an engraved decoration
and bearing an inscription along the rim. This important center of pottery
production came to be well represented in the collection thanks to numerous
donations from Jacques Boucher de Crève-coeur de Perthes, the father of French
archaeology. In the course of excavating around Abbeville he discovered Stone
Age remains as well as later pottery artifacts, including not only shards of
bottles and other objects but a complete blue stoneware flask (MNC 3090) with
fleurs-de-lis motifs, discovered in the bed of the Somme in 1835.
It
was perhaps thanks to a confusion with Nevers pottery that Saint Jean du Désert
work first entered the museum’s collection. At the Didier-Petit sale, Brogniart
acquired a superb large circular platter (MNC 3108) whose entire surface was
covered with a battle scene executed in blue cameo.
Sevres Porcelain
Sevres’s own production was incorporated into the
collection rather late in Brongniart’s life. Brongniart had all of the manufactory’s
previously produced molds and models at his disposition, but the public’s
antipathy to its earlier productions may have caused reservations about placing
them on display. A cup and saucer (MNC 698) dating from 1787 entered the
collection in 1819, but it was a special case. The pieces were decorated with
neoclassical motifs of arcades, incense burners, and a cantharus lamp. In 1823
Brongniart exhibited two cups called
coupes
‘Jasmin’ (MNC 819) with gold and platinum decoration dating from 1814, and
a year later a teacup (MNC 839) with a red-orange ground was also put on
display. In 1826 a milk jug (MNC 961.3) dating from 1804 with glost-fired blue
ground and silver decoration was inscribed in the inventory, where it is
described as an “historical specimen illustrating the use of various metals in
porcelain decoration.”
It
was not until 1835, therefore, that a substantial number of Sèvres pieces
entered the collection, beginning with fifty-four hard-paste pieces (MNC 1787)
characterized in the inventory as a “sample set of historical shape and
decorations.” Even these, however, were only from the early years of
Brongniart’s tenure; they had been selected from various Sèvres table services
dating from 1804 or later. Some of them had remained in the manufactory’s
possession because of slight flaws that had rendered them unsuitable for
delivery.
Most generously represented was
the service ‘Marli d’Or’, which had
been begun in 1805 and remained in production into the Restauration. The
painters who had worked on it had since become widely popular: they included
Nicolas-Antoine Taunay, Piat-Joseph Sauvage, Martin Drölling, Caron, and J.-F.
Robert. In contrast, Brongniart could display only three unfinished pieces from
the service ‘Olympique’; a single
plate from the first service ‘Egyptien’;
painted in 1806 by Josse François Joseph Swebach, and another plate from the
second service ‘Egyptien’; also
painted by Swebach in 1810. There were similarly modest holdings in other
services as well. The manufactory had kept only three plates from the service ‘Iconographique Grec’, including
one decorated with a profile of Venus by Degault, four plates from the service ‘de l’Empereur’ and a single
plate, painted by Bouillat in 1808, from the service ‘Vues d’Italie’.
Between
1810 and 1813 Béranger decorated a scroll vase with a superb composition
depicting the arrival in Paris of the many Italian art treasures seized by the
French in the wake of Napoleon’s victorious campaign. This showpiece had not
found a buyer prior to the emperor’s fall from power, which meant that it
remained in the manufactory’s possession. It, too, entered the museum inventory
in the 1830s (MNC 1823). Despite its quality, it could not be displayed until
the political passions associated with the Italian campaign had cooled. In
fact, Brongniart had barely saved it from destruction after the installation of
the Restauration government.
At
about the same time Brongniart also placed on exhibit a figure of Bacchus (MNC
1830) holding a bunch of grapes. This was among the earliest pieces made at the
manufactory with kaolin from the deposits in Saint-Yrieix near Limoges, the
first source of this crucial ingredient of hard-paste to be discovered within
French borders.
Perhaps
the most significant development of 1835 was Brongniart’s long-delayed decision
to exhibit soft-paste porcelain. Unfortunately, by this time the manufactory’s
holdings had been severely depleted by exchanges and auctions. What remained
were primarily pieces dating from between 1770 and 1790. Many were flawed
blanks, such as a glass cooler (MNC 1854) from the service made for Catherine
II of Russia in 1778. All that remained from the Vincennes years were three
plates (MNC 1870 - 1872) in the Saxon style decorated with motifs in relief, a
coffee cup (MNC 1878) with a “wolf’s-teeth” decoration, and a few of
the polychrome floral bouquets (MNC 1895) that had been instrumental in
establishing the manufactory’s reputation.
Having
made the decision to include this work in the museum, however, Brongniart began
adding to this part of the collection. A plate from the service ‘des Arts Industriels’ (MNC 2011), decorated with a view of
the old mill, was placed on view in 1836 and was joined four years later by two
more plates (2872.1 and 2872.2) from the same service, featuring views of the
sculpture and painting workshops. In 1838 Espine donated a small Sèvres pommade
jar dating from 1760 (MNC 2593). Brongniart, in his letter acknowledging the
gift, expressed regret about having ostracized such pieces for so long, stating
that if he had acted otherwise “this patriarchal part of our museum would
not be so impoverished.”
In
1846 the antiquarian Beurdeley donated a Vincennes bowl (MNC 3675). In a letter
sent with his gift, he apologized for its modesty but noted that it had a
certain interest because it was painted with “the château de Vincennes,
probably the side on which the manufactory was located.”
The Exchange with Dresden
As early as 1830, in a letter to the vicomte de
La Rochefoucauld outlining a travel itinerary, Brongniart wrote: “I would
like above all to see once again in Dresden the famous Japanese Palace in which
an immense collection [of porcelain] has long been assembled.”
Brongniart had been obliged to return to Paris soon after his departure because
of the outbreak of 1830 revolution. It was not until 1835 and 1836 that these
travel plans were ultimately realized. His hopes for Dresden were more than
met. “I was sure I would find in this residence … all the elements of a
history of European porcelain …. I spent a great deal of time studying this
collection group by group.” Brongniart even asked Lindenau, president
of the Council of Saxony, to authorize Klemm, the curator of the Japonais
Palais, to donate a group of duplicates in the collection to Sèvres. His
request was well received, at least initially, and an exchange was negotiated.
Six large animal figures from the Palais Japonais were set aside for the Sèvres
collection, including a peacock, rhinoceros, bear, pelican, and the celebrated
chimera (MNC 2274.35). Also pledged were ten early pieces of Böttger
stoneware. Some had unblemished reddish brown surfaces decorated with pressed
relief ornament while others had been polished on a lapidary lathe or covered
with a brown lacquer glaze decorated with gold, and still others featured
engraved decoration (MNC 2272). A small seated Chinese magus (MNC 2272.1) was
donated. This remarkable assemblage was to be completed by forty-one more
pieces, including thirty-three porcelains from Meissen with Korean decoration
dating from 1720-30 (KJC 2274), which were to be sent after Brongniart’s
departure.
Before
the exchange could be completed, however, there was a diplomatic dispute over
the contents. The Saxon government decided to withhold delivery until the
reciprocal French gift was safely in their hands. More importantly, because
they estimated the total value of the pieces being ceded to Sèvres at 4,000
francs, they insisted on French objects of comparable overall value. Brongniart
was quite annoyed by these developments and wrote, not entirely in good faith:
“I do not know how they arrived at such a value, given that the things are
most defaced and flawed.”
It
proved difficult to assemble objects produced at Sèvres worth such a figure
with the warehouses virtually bare. To make up the difference Brongniart turned
to the manufactory’s holdings in ancient pottery, ceding fifteen pieces from
the former Denon collection, a vase from the island of Milo, two Etruscan
pieces from Volterra, and two small vases sent from Bordeaux by Jouannet. He
also sent five vases from Tchanakale in Smyrna and even some stoneware jars, a
jug, and a coffee pot from Baltimore. This assortment was still
insufficient, however, and he acquired pieces of opaque porcelain from
Montereau, Creil, and Choisy and had some Chinese reticulated pieces made
expressly at Sèvres for the delivery. He also located a soft-paste soup
tureen and stand produced at Sèvres in 1795 as well as a wine cooler dating
from 1798. The group was completed by an imperial wash basin with gold frieze
from 1813, a wash bowl from 1815, several pieces of tableware in Etruscan form
with gadrooned decorations, a richly embellished coffee pot from the déjeuner ‘François I’, two plates from
the service ‘Marli d ‘Or’ painted by
Schilt and Jacobber, and a plate with shell ornaments painted by
Philippine.
The Museum and the Traité des arts céramiques
The character of the museum
was inseparable from Brongniart’s other great project, his treatise on
ceramics, the Traité des arts céramiques.
Influenced by the example of Linnaeus in the realm of botany, Brongniart set
out to apply a taxonomic approach to the ceramic arts. In 1830 he informed La
Rochefoucauld that he had already drawn up a plan for the work. All the
museum’s resources were brought to bear on its publication, as was the
information obtained through correspondence and during his many travels. This
data made it possible for Brongniart to fill many of the lacunae in earlier
texts dealing with the subject. As seen, Chardin’s publication of 1711 was full
of misinformation that Brongniart had difficulty deciphering, and Passeri’s
book on majolica (1775) was nothing but a paean to the achievements of Pesaro’s
craftsmen. Brongniart, by contrast, undertook a rigorous classification of
ceramics based on a careful examination of the various materials used in their
production. No serious history of the ceramic arts could be undertaken until
such a system had been developed. Through the close study of individual
artifacts assembled in one place one could determine whether a potter’s wheel
had been used, and a careful analysis of glazes and other surface treatments
would serve, through comparison, as a basis for postulating the communication
of ceramics techniques from people to people. The publication bearing the fruit
of all this research and reflection, consisting of two volumes of text and an additional
volume of plates, appeared in 1844.
The
next year, a companion work entitled Description
méthodique du musée céramique, a catalogue of the museum’s collection, was
published. It had been written with Denis-Desire Riocreux and adhered to the
classification system developed in the treatise, proposing short but concise
descriptions by Riocreux of each piece in the collection.
The
huge step forward effected by these two works becomes clear when they are
compared with publications only slightly earlier in date. One of these, the
catalogue of the royal collection in Dresden, written by Klemm and published in
1834, surveys ceramics production from the ancient Egyptians to the
contemporary period in a mere sixty-six pages and then describes the museum’s
holdings on a room-by-room basis. Two years later, De Witte, in his sale
catalogue of the Durand collection, decided to follow an iconographic
classification according to the subjects depicted on the pieces: mythological,
heroic, mystical, civilian, and so on.
Brongniart
and Riocreux’s Description méthodique du
musée céramique is vastly different both in scope and approach. In 454
pages of text they analyze the entirety of the museum’s collection on the basis
of Brongniart’s new taxonomic classification system and provide a careful
listing of all the marks and signatures found on the pieces (compiled by
Riocreux). This was the first time any such compendium had been attempted. The
accompanying volume of plates contains fifty-five devoted to ceramic and
vitreous productions dating from antiquity to the time of publication, thirteen
more plates to Sèvres pieces dating from between 1830 and 1845, and an
additional ten plates of the manufactory’s glass-painting workshop.
Together,
these publications – the Traité des arts
céramiques and Description méthodique
du musée céramique – represent the culmination of a life devoted to the
ceramic arts. During his tenure at Sèvres, Brongniart strove to initiate
advances in current production techniques and, more importantly, to improve the
understanding of ceramic materials and their historical evolution. It had
always been Brongniart’s intention to assemble a collection of pieces of all
kinds, dating from all periods, that were significant “from a technical
point of view.” His fundamental priorities were never aesthetic: on the contrary,
he sought to bring together simple, unprepossessing pieces that offered
evidence about the development of fabrication techniques. His determination to
encompass the full range of ceramics production made it possible for the Sèvres
museum to present a surprisingly eclectic collection at a very early date. With
only limited means at his disposal, Brongniart succeeded in assembling a
remarkable array of artifacts tracing the medium’s historical development. To a
considerable degree, the museum was conceived as a platform to support
Brongniart’s scientific investigations, but it was also the first such
institution in France to be devoted exclusively to a single branch of the
decorative arts. It quickly took on a life of its own, but the history of its
acquisitions in this formative period offers a fascinating glimpse of the
changing values and interests of learned French society during the first half
of the nineteenth century.
© Bard Graduate Center, Sylvie Millaseau.
Note: The documents cited below are from the Archives the Manufacture Nationale de Sèvres (AMNS), the Archives of the Musée de Sèvres (AMS), and the Musée National de Céramique (MNC). In the essay text, the MNC numbers, given in parentheses, represent the museum’s inventory numbers; unattributed quotations have been taken from the inventory notations made by Riocreux.
There are 3,800 entries in the inventory, but since many of these include several pieces, the number of actual pieces in the collection is much higher. The numbers assigned by Riocreux continue to be used today.
“These are neither art objects notable for their form, composition, design, etc., … nor historical objects notable for what they represent, nor archeological objects notable for their inscriptions; none of these considerations led us to assemble them. Without being formally excluded, [such pieces] were valuable to us only insofar as they contributed to our knowledge of the history of the ceramic arts … [and] finally to the [material] progress of art” [Ce ne sont ni des objets d’art sous le rapport des formes, des compositions du dessin, etc …. ni des objets historiques, sous celui des objets représentés, ni des objets archéologiques sous celuis des inscriptions, ce n’est aucune de ces considérations qui nous les a fait recueillir; sans être formellement exclues, elles n’ont eu de valeur pour nous qu’en contribuant à nous faire connaître l’histoire des arts céramiques … enfin le progrès de l’art] (Brongniart and Riocreux, Description méthodique du musée céramique [1845], preface).
Central to this debate was the perceived need to revive the grand genre of history painting. See La Font de Saint Yenne, Reflexions (1747).
Ibid., p. 40.
The collection of the school in Rouen boasted “plaster casts, prints, an écorché by Houdon, and a few paintings belonging to the director” (Edouard Pommier, “La Naissance des musées de Province,” in Nora, ed., Les Lieux de mémoire 2 (I986), pp. 451-90, quotation p. 457.
Bachelier’s school opened on September 10, 1766. See Leben, “New Light on the Ecole Royale Gratuite de Dessin” (1993), pp. 99-118; Birembaut, “Les Ecoles gratuites” (1964), pp. 441–70.
Shackelton, “The Enlightenment and the Artisan” (1980), p. 56 ff.
Mercier, 1794: L’Abbé Grégoire et la création du Conservatoire (1989); Marot, “L’Abbé Grégoire et le vandalisme” (1980); Bergdoll, “Le Progrés des arts réunis et l’abbé Grégoire,” in Rabreau and Tollon, eds., Le Progrés des arts réunis, (1992), pp. 159-67.
Haskell, History and Its Images (1993), pp. 236-52; Dominique Poulot, “Alexandre Lenoir et le musée des monuments français,” in Nora, Les Lieux de mémoire, La Nation (1986), vol. 2, pp. 496-531 (esp. p. 497 ff.).
AMNS, Register Vc 2, letter dated 9 Messidor year 8 (June 28, 1800).
À côté de terres blanches du département de Ia haute Vienne, les produits industriels qu’il a fourni AMNS, Carton U 1, liasse L 1, dossier 3.
[est devenue à l’égard de Paris, la branche de l’industrie la plus considérable]; [celles de chimistes qui se sont succédés à la manufacture de Sèvres…on pourrait offrir aux amis des arts et de l’industrie Nationale, une collection complète dont on se sert, les savants en la consultant pourraient peut-être remplir les lacunes qui se rencontrent dans quelques dégradations de teintes ou augmenter le nombre et la beauté des couleurs primitives] Ibid.
[surtout à l’égard de celles de la manufacture de Sèvres…la vente des porcelaines anciennement fabriqués dans cette maison doit avoir lieu le 21 de ce mois…il faudrait le matin de ce jour que quelqu’un fut chargé de mettre à part quelques unes de pièces qu’il pourrait juger convenir au but que se propose le conseil] Ibid.
[14].The passage from his letter reads, “Il serait peut-être encore un moyen de nous procurer quelques fonds pour payer les frais d’établissement, ce serait de faire une vente à l’encan d’un grand nombre de vieilles porcelaines qui encombrent nos magasins et qui nuisent à la manufacture en faisant croire à ceux qui viennent la visiter qu’elle fabrique encore de ces choses gothiques“ (AMNS, Register Vc 2, letter dated 9 Messidor year 8 [June 28, 1800]).
[Je crois utile aux progrès de l’art de la poterie et à son histoire de rassembler d’une manière méthodique dans l’établissement national qui a été l’école d’une branche de cet art, et qui doit être celle de l’art entier, tous les objets d’art et de science qui peuvent servir à l’histoire de la poterie fine et commune] Ibid., letter dated 10 Thermidor year 9 (July 29, 1801). Even the title of the catalogue, Description méthodique du musée céramique, as well as its preface, emphasizes a systematic, didactic approach.
[une belle suite de vases étrusques]; [une assez belle suite d’études de fleurs, de fruits et d’animaux de différents maîtres et notamment de Desportes et d’Oudry]; (une suite intéressante pour l’histoire des progrès du goût des modèles de tous les vases d’ornement et d’usage que la manufacture a fait depuis sa création]; (une assez grande quantité d’argile et de matières premières de divers lieux et diverses natures propres à fabrication de la poterie] Ibid. The Etruscan vases were part of the Denon collection of ancient pottery, which Louis XVI had acquired in 1786. Shortly thereafter, d’Angiviller, the king’s minister of works, transferred these pieces to the Sèvres manufactory for use as models. See Massoul, Corpus vasorum antiquorum (1934).
“The objects are scattered throughout the workshops, and even in the attics. They are in a disorderly jumble, without indications as to place [of origin] or date [of acquisition], in the end they are useless riches that will acquire value only by becoming useful” (AMNS, Register Vc 2, letter dated July 29, 1801).
Ibid.
Ibid.
“You realize that it is only by discovery of a suitable clay or mixture of various clays that we will manage to produce white pottery as beautiful as that of the English” (ibid.).
Brongniart and Riocreux, Description méthodique du musée céramique (1845). preface.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Milet, Notice sur Riocreux (1883)
AMNS, Register Vc 8, letter dated March 2, 1829, from Brongniart to the comte de La Rochefoucauld. Riocreux was also placed in charge of the manufactory’s books, prints, drawings, paintings, medals, and models (wax, plaster, and bronze).
Ibid, letter dated May 20, 1829, from Brongniart to Riocreux.
Milet, Notice sur Riocreux (1883).
AMNS, Register Vc 8, letter dated January 3, 1834, from Brongniart to the vicomte de Monralivet.
“I noticed a bill in the amount of 200 francs…You should submit special proposals for acquisitions of this kind” (AMS, Carton 1, Liasse 1, dossier 18, letter dated August 30, 1834, from Montalivet to Brongniart).
AMNS, Register Vc 7, letter dated November 22, 1825, from Brongniart to the vicomte de La Rochefoucauld.
Ibid., letter dated April 10, 1826, from Brongniart to the vicomte de La Rochefoucauld. Sallé was an artist and antiques dealer; the auction of his collection was held on April 11, 1826.
AMS, Carton I, Liasse 3, 89 bis.
Massoul, Corpus vasorum antiquorum (1934), preface.
Ibid., (askos) pl. 40, figs. 2 and 3; (kraters) pl. 31, fig. 11.
Ibid., (hellenistic pieces) pl. 23, fig. 26; (black-figure vases) pl. 15, figs. 8 and 10; pl. 16, figs. 4-6, 7-9; (goblets) pl. 17, figs. 2-4, 8-9.
AMS, Carton 1, Liasse 1, dossier 18, letter dated February 1, 1832, from Gaspary to Brongniart.
Massoul, Corpus vasorum antiquorum (1934), pl. 11, figs. 12 and 13.
Ibid., preface.
Ibid., (oinochoe) pl. II, figs. 3, 5, 7; (tumblers) pl. II, fig. 2; (kernos) pl. II , fig. 9; (kraters) pl. 12, fig. 1.
AMNS, Carton 1, Liasse 1, dossier 17, letter dated February 21, 1842, from Dubuc to Brongniart, Paris; Massoul, Corpus vasorum antiquorum (1934), pl. 23, figs. 34, 35.
For the rediscovery of Etruscan civilization, see Pallotino, Les Etrusques et l’Europe, exhib. cat. (1992).
Massoul, Corpus vasorum antiquorum (1934), pl. 28, fig. 4; (oinochoe) pl. 28, fig. 27.
Edmond Antoine Durand was a merchant who began to collect antiquities in 1799 while traveling in Italy. His first collection was bought in its entirety by the Louvre in 1824. The second collection was sold at auction in 1836, after Durand’s death; it consisted primarily of Greek vases and other pieces that had been removed from excavations in Vulci and Nola in Italy.
Brönstedt was the author of a memoir entitled Voyage et recherches en Grèce (nd). No more information on this source is available.
AMNS, Register U 15, Liasse 1, dossier 4, letter dated May 30, 1836, from Riocreux to Brongniart, Sèvres.
AMS, Carton 1, Liasse 1, dossier 28.
Ibid.; Massoul, Corpus vasorum antiquorum (1934), pl. 25, figs. 3, 5, 6.
AMS, Carton 1, Liasse 1, dossier 28; Massoul, Corpus vasorum antiquorum (1934), pl. 14, figs. 19, 23.
Massoul, Corpus vasorum antiquorum (1934), pl. 26, figs. II, 16.
Ibid., pl. 28, no. 5; Brongniart and Riocreux, Description Méthodique du musée céramique (1845), vol. 2, pl. 28, fig. 5.
Massoul, Corpus vasorum antiquorum (1934), pl. 1, fig. 19; Maingot, Le Baron Taylor (1963).
Massoul, Corpus vasorum antiquorum (1934), pl. 1, fig. 9.
AMS, Carton 1, liasse 1, dossier 28.
Ibid., dossier 26, letter dated September 30, 1847, from Lavé to Brongniart, Paris.
Massoul, Corpus vasorum antiquorum (1934), pl. 57, figs. 8, 13. The place names used in this essay are spelled as they were in the nineteenth century.
Ibid., pl. 55, figs. 6-25, 28; pl. 56, fig. 2.
Ibid., pl. 55, fig. 9.
AMS, Carton 3, liasse 16, letter dated November 16, 1831, from Renaud de Saint-Amour to Brongniard, Lauterbourg; ibid., letter dated December 7, 1831, from Brogniard to Baron Fain, Sèvres; Massoul, Corpus vasorum antiquorum (1934), pl. 57, figs, 1, 2, 3.
Massoul, Corpus vasorum antiquorum (1934), (small cups) pl. 56, figs. 4, 5, 7; (goblets) pl. 56, figs 11, 12; (small amphora), pl. 58, fig 31; (oinochoe) pl. 58, fig. 32.
Ibid., (vial) pl. 56, fig. 26; (oinochoe) pl. 58, fig. 54.
Ibid., pl. 56, figs. 20, 25.
AMS, Carton 1, liasse 2, dossier 36, letter dated December 10, 1836, from d’Espine to Brongniart plus a little note unlocated.
Ibid., dossier 51, letter dated January 29, 1840, from Brongniart to Larchan, Sèvres.
Ibid., dossier 65, letter dated October 8, 1843, from Deville to Brongniart.
AMS, Carton 3, letter dated January 1839, from Delanoue to Brongniart.
Pomian, Anticomanie (1992), pp. 59 ff.
Massoul, Corpus vasorum antiquorum (1934), pl. 60, fig. 23; Carton 1, liasse 2, g9.
Massoul, Corpus vasorum antiquorum (1934), pl. 60, figs. 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.
AMS, Carton 1, liasse 2, dossier 71, letter dated May 5, 1844, from Olfers to Brongniart, Berlin.
For examples of Brongniart’s instructions, see AMS, Carton 1, liasse 1, 2, to Mazinski, dated February 12, 1830; ibid., liasse 2, dossier 6, to lieutenant of the vessel Laplace; Carton 2, liasse 1, dossier 1, to Viquesnel.
AMS, Carton 2, liasse 1, dossier 1, Barrot mission.
Reyniers, Céramiques américaines, (1966), p. 110, fig. 193.
AMNS, Register Vc 8, letter dated May 29, 1834, from Brongniart to the vicomte de Montalivet.
Reyniers, Céramiques américaines, (1966), (llama vase) p. 144, fig. 282; (spherical pitcher) p. 145, fig. 283; (stirrup vase) p. 114, fig. 206; (cat vase) p. 115, fig. 209; (geometric vase) p. 131, fig. 251; (Aztec figure) p. 60, fig. 81.
Ibid., p. 195, fig. 81; AMS, Carton 2, liasse 2, dossier 5, letter dated December 27, 1837, from Barret to Brongniart, Manila.
Reyniers, Céramiques américaines (1966), p. 117, fig. 215.
Ibid., pp. 142-43, figs. 275, 278, 279.
Ibid., p. 164, fig. 317.
Ibid., p. 101, fig. 186; AMS, Carton 1, liasse 3, dossier 75, letter dated March 5, 1843, from Schoelcher to Brongniart, Paris.
Reyniers, Céramiques américaines, (1966), p. 169, fig. 329.
Ibid., p. 170, figs. 330, 331; p. 171, figs. 332, 333; AMS, Carton 1, liasse 2, dossier 32; ibid., Carton 1, liasse 3, dossier 4.
For Brongniart’s instructions to Laplace see AMS, Carton 2, liasse 2, dossier 6.
Ibid., letter dated December 20, 1837, from Laplace to Brongniart, Cape of Good Hope.
Ibid., dossier 7, Ackerman mission.
Ibid., dossier 6, letter dated October 28, 1841, from Brongniart to Rochet d’Héricourt.
Ibid., letter dated August 28, 1837, from Laplace to Brongniart, Madras.
Ibid., letter dated October 29, 1838, from Laplace to Brongniart, Canton.
For Brongniart’s instructions to Darcet see ibid., dossier 7.
Brongniart, Traité des arts cèramique (1844), vol. 2, pp. 90-91.
Ibid., p. 97.
AMS, Carton 3, liasse 46, Botta mission.
Brongniart, Traité des arts céramique (1844), vol. 2, p. 92.
AMS, Carton 1, liasse 1, dossier 13, cover letter dated May 18, 1830, from Virlet, Modon.
For Brongniart’s instructions to Diran dated August 9, 1843, see AMS, Carton 2, liasse 2, dossier 1.
AMS, Carton 1, liasse 3, dossier 81, letter dated November 27, 1847, from Visquesnel to Brongniart, “Sulè Bourgas.”
AMS, unpaginated manuscript.
Comte de Milly, L’Art de la porcelaine (Paris, 1771), p. xxj.
[Faïence mimo porcelaine] Brongniart and Riocreux, Description mèthodique du musée céramique (1845), vol. 1, p. 187, caption to no. 240.
Slitine, “La cèramique orientale dans les ventes publiques” (1996).
[Une assiette faïence commune émaillée en bleu dite porcelaine de Perse] AMS, Carton 1, liasse 1, dossier 12, Toppi exchange.
Brongniart and Riocreux, Description méthodique du musée céramique (1845), vol. 2, pl. 39, fig. 15.
Ibid., vol. 2, pl. 39, fig. 14. Jules Ziegler (1804-1856) began his career as a history painter before becoming a potter who worked in stoneware in Voisinlieu, in the Beauvaisis.
AMNS, Carton 3, liasse 46, Botta mission, 1835.
Brongniart and Riocreux, Description méthodique du musée céramique (1845), p. 187, no. 240a.
Ibid., p. 187, no. 240b.
For a note from Riocreux attesting the loss, see Carton 2, liasse 3, dossier 1.
Brongniart and Riocreux, Description méthodique du musée céramique (1845), p. 158, no. 190.
Soustiel, La céramique islamique (1985), pp. 292–93.
AMS, Carton 3, liasse 2.
AMNS, Register Vc 7.
Slitine, “La Céramique orientale dans les ventes publiques” (1996).
Kaempfer, Histoire naturelle (1732).
AMS, Carton 2, liasse 2, dossier 5, Barrot mission, instructions of December 1835 (several pages written by Brongniart).
[Il se présente] plusieurs pièces de porcelaine de chine remarquable sous le rapport des procédés techniques] AMNS, Register Vc 7, letter dated April 10, 1826, from Brongniart to La Rochefoucauld.
AMS, Carton 2, liasse 2, dossier 6, Toppi mission to London.
Ibid., dossier 5, Barrot mission (instructions); ibid., dossier 6, Laplace mission (instructions).
Ibid., dossier 6, Laplace mission.
AMS, Carton 3, liasse 1, Houssaye exchange.
Labit and Lassère, “Le chevalier Boudon de Saint Amans” (1973).
For further information on the Enquête de Préfets, see chap. II in this volume.
Plinval-Salgues, “La céramique française aux expositions industrielles” (1961).
AMS, Register Vc 3, letter dated December 12, 1833, from Brongniart to the comte de Montalivet.
AMS, dossier Creil, letter dated October 5, 1823, from Brongniart to Saint Cricq-Cazaux, Paris.
For the prototype letter to producer, see AMS, Carton 3.
MNC 678 [avaient été soumises, l’une a l’action de l’hydrosulfure de potasse pendant une demi-journée, l’autre à l’évaporation du vinaigre]; MNC 687 [servi journellement pendant deux ans exposé au feu de poële ou de cheminée]; MNC 808 [subir l’épreuve de la fusion du feldspath au grand feu du four à porcelaine]; MNC 1671 [avait fait l’usage pendant deux ans du service de table de M. Dumas professeur à l’Academie Royale des Sciences].
AMS, Carton 1, liasse 2, dossier 5, letter dated December 10, 1841, from Brongniart to Tissot.
Register Vc 7, letter dated February 16, 1828, from Brongniart to the vicomte de La Rochefoucauld.
The language in the inventory describes the piece as being entirely covered with a luster, a new technique at the manufactory at this time.
Alcouffe, Dion-Tenenbaum, and Ennès, Un âge d’or, exhib. cat. (1991), p. 35.
Ibid., pp. 133–35.
Ravel d’Esclapon, La Faïence de Rubelles (1988); AMS, dossier 182.
AMS, Carton 1, liasse 2, dossier 88, Chevreuse donation.
Brongniart and Riocreux, Description méthodique du musée céramique (1845), vol. 2, pl. 44, fig. 7; Alcouffe, Dion-Tenenbaum, and Ennès, Un âge d’or, exhib. cat. (1991), p. 350.
AMS, Carton 1, liasse 3, letter dated June 7, 1844, from Gosse to Brongniart, Paris.
AMS, Carton 1, liasse 2, dossier 56, Ziegler donation.
AMS, Carton 1, Vienna dossier.
AMNS, Register Vc3, letter dated January 21, 1808, from Brongniart to the Intendant Général.
AMS, Carton 1, Vienna dossier, letter dated April 1, 1804, from Chevalier Landriani to Brongniart.
AMNS, Register Vc3, letter dated July 24, 1806, from Brongniart to the director of the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle.
AMS, Carton 1, Vienna dossier.
Ibid.
AMNS, Register Vc3, letter dated November 17, 1805, from Brongniart to Denon.
Ibid., letter dated December 31, 1805, from Brongniart to the Intendant Général.
Ibid., letter dated February 5, 1806, from Brongniart to Rosenstiel.
AMS, Carton 1, liasse 1, dossier 1, Berlin donation.
AMNS, Register Vc3, letter dated November 18, 1808, from Brongniart to the Intendant Général.
Ibid., letter dated January 24, 1808, from Brongniart to the Intendant Général.
Ibid., letter dated January 12, 1809, from Brongniart to the Intendant Général.
AMS, Carton 1, liasse 1, dossier 4, Fürstenberg exchange, letter dated October 5, 1815, from the comte de Pradel to Brongniart.
Ibid.
Carton 1, liasse 1, dossier 7, Russian exchange.
Ibid.
AMS, Carton 1, liasse 2, dossier 44 bis, letter dated November 24, 1837, from Brongniart to Meyendorf.
Ibid., letters are dated November 4, 1839 from the Intendant Général to Brongniart and from de Wailly to Brongniart, both Paris.
AMNS Carton M 10, dossier 1 letter dated August 12, 1836, from Brongniart to Baron Fain, Munich.
AMNS, Register Vc4, letter dated September 9, 1812, from Brongniart to the Intendant Général, Berlin.
AMNS, Carton M 5, liasse 3, dossier 1, letter dated March 23, 1824, from Brongniart to the marquis de Lauriston.
AMNS, Register Vc8, letter dated August 7, 1835, from Brongniart to the comte de Montalivet.
AMNS Carton M 9, dossier 5, letter dated October 5, 1835, from Brongniart to Vautrin, Carlsruhe.
AMNS, Register Vc9, letter dated March 5, 1836, from Brongniart to Baron Fain, Sèvres.
AMNS, Carton M 10, dossier 1, letter dated June 5, 1836, from Brongniart to Baron Fain, Sèvres.
Letter dated July 11, 1836 from Brongniart to Baron Fain, Berlin.
Ibid., letter dated August 12, 1836, from Brongniart to Baron Fain, Munich.
Ibid.
For Brongniart’s interest in feldspar-free porcelain, see ibid., letter dated July 11, 1836, to Baron Fain, Berlin.
Ibid.
Ibid.
AMNS, Carton U 15, liasse 5, dossier 4, letter dated August 15, 1836, from Brongniart to Sèvres, Innsbruck.
AMNS, Carton 1, liasse 2, dossier 51.
For delivery from Chanou, see AMS, Carton 1, liasse 3, dossier 32.
For delivery from Ducatel, see AMS, Carton 1, liasse 2, dossier 33.
Ibid., letter dated June 4, 1836, from Ducatel to Brongniart, Baltimore.
AMS, Carton 1, liasse 2, dossier 32, letter dated July 27, 1836, from Silliman to Brongniart, New Haven.
Ibid., letter dated January 6, 1837, from Brongniart to Keating, Sèvres.
AMS, Register Vc 2.
Courajod, La Collection Durand (1888).
Courajod, La Collection Révoil (1886).
In 1844 Brongniart knew of thirty-seven such pieces in private collections (Brongniart, Traité des arts céramique [1844], vol. 2, p. 175).
AMNS, Carton T 11, liasse 2, dossier 6, letter from Turpin de Crissé to Brongniart.
[Les pièces en biscuit n’étant susceptibles d’aucun emploi sans être restaurées et sont d’aillleurs toutes de rebut, il en reste deux fois autant] AMS, Carton 1, liasse 1, dossier 12, Toppi exchange of May 27,1830.
Ibid., Toppi exchange of October 17, 1829.
AMS, Carton 1, liasse 1, dossier 11, Vachée exchanges.
AMS, Carton 1, liasse 1, dossier 12, Hairon exchange.
Ibid., Toppi exchanges.
The Debruge and Soulages sale.
AMNS, Carton M 9, dossier 5, letter dated September 13, 1835, from Brongniart to Vautrin, Amsterdam.
AMNS, Carton M 10, dossier 1, letter dated August 12, 1836, from Brongniart to Baron Fain, Munich.
Brongniart and Riocreux, Description méthodique du musée céramique (1845), vol. 2, pl. 37, fig. 5.
AMNS, Carton M 10, dossier 1, letter dated June 5, 1836, from Brongniart to Baron Fain, Yorkshire.
“Of the twenty-five or thirty sections making up this collection … only one concerns pottery and enamel … [and] it teaches us nothing” (Brongniart, Traité des arts céramiques [1844], vol. 2, p. 62).
AMS, Carton 3, dossier 9, letter dated June 7, 1844, from Brongniart to Brond, Sèvres.
[faïence violette de Louis Poterat] inventory, MNC 3130.
[194].”All these forms and groups, which five or six years ago were regarded with such distaste that one had to pass by the shelves supporting them in haste to avoid the criticisms that they habitually evoked, now began to be admired and sought after” (Brongniart and Riocreux, Description méthodique du musée céramique [1845], preface).
[Spécimen historique d’application des divers métaux à la décoration des porcelaines] inventory, MNC 961.3.
[Suite d’échantillons historiques de forme et décoration] inventory, MNC 1787.
Brongniart continues, “If only thirty-eight years ago I had possessed the experience of age, which teaches that whatever is rare is deemed valuable” [Ah que n’avais je, il y a 38 ans, l’expérience des vieux qui apprennent qu’on ne fait grand cas que de ce qui est rare] (AMS, Carton 1, liasse 2, dossier 36, letter dated December 30, 1838, from Brongniart to Espine, Sèvres).
[le bol a peu de valeur mais ce qui est curieux c’est au fond d’y voir peint le château de Vincennes et probablement le côte où se trouvait la manufacture] Ibid., dossier 72, letter dated August 16, 1846, from Beurdeley to Brongniart, Paris.
AMNS, Register Vc 8, letter dated June 15, 1830, from Brongniart to the vicomte de La Rochefoucauld, Sèvres.
AMNS, Carton M 10, dossier 1, letter dated August 12, 1836, from Brongniart to Baron Fain, Munich.
AMS, Carton 1, liasse 2, dossier 30, Dresden exchange.
[Je ne sais comment on aura fait l’évaluation de choses la plupart frustres et défectueuses] AMS, Carton 1, liasse 2, dossier 34, letter dated December 30, 1836, from Brongniart to Montalivet, Sèvres.
Ibid.
AMS, Carton 1, liasse 2, dossier 30, letter dated June 27, 1837 from Brongniart to Klemm, Sèvres.
AMS, Carton 1, liasse 2, dossier 34, Dresden exchange.
[Ce travail dont je suis occupé depuis plus de huit mois] AMNS, Register Vc8, letter dated June 15, 1830, from Brongniart to La Rochefoucauld, Sèvres.
Passeri, Histoire de la peinture sur majolique (1775), reprinted in Italian in 1838 (Istoria delle pitture in majolica).
Klemm, Die königliche sachsische porzellan-und gefasse-sammlung (Dresden, 1834).
De Witte, Description des antiquités … Durand (Paris, 1836).