Manufacture Impériale de Sèvres. Rare pair of flared half-bo - Lot 338

Manufacture Impériale de Sèvres. Rare pair of flared half-bottle buckets with gules lion handles. Hard-paste porcelain with beau-bleu ground and gold-friezed floral decoration. Incised turner's mark, with vignette (voluntarily erased under Louis XVIII) of 1810 for the white, date of gilding. Dimensions: H. 13.5 cm. Wear and tear and pierced bottom for bronze mounting. Slight chips. This pair of half-bottle buckets reproduces the design of the Grand Maréchal du Palais service in the Tuileries. This set, with its beautiful blue background, gold frieze and garland of flowers, was first delivered on May 12, 1806, and was reordered several times, notably in August 1808, 1812 and 1813. Our pair of half-bottle buckets probably comes from a later re-order, as the Manufacture's records show. Indeed, several orders for half-bottle buckets with beau-bleu bottoms were placed at the Palais des Tuileries: 4 on February 10, 1816; and 6 on May 17, 1816, Archives de la Manufacture de Sèvres, fol. 88 recto and 89 verso, Vbb 5 (ventes à crédits).this was the service used by Empire Marshals Duroc, Duc de Frioul and then Comte de Bertrand. Napoleon probably took a small set of these plates with him to St. Helena, and one is preserved at La Malmaison, bearing a handwritten label "rapportée à St-Hélène" ("brought back to St. Helena"). The rest are still in use at the Palais des Tuileries, and were inventoried in 1821. See Napoléon I Sèvres. L'art de la porcelaine au service de l'Empire, edited by Camille Leprince, Feu et Talent, 2016.