Sèvres porcelain in the pâte-sur-pâte style
Sèvres porcelain in the pâte-sur-pâte style
The pâte-sur-pâte (literally: “paste on paste”) ceramic decoration method was adopted by French craftsmen from earlier Chinese designs. In Europe, the techniques of pâte-sur-pâte were most successfully developed by the masters of the Sevres manufactory in the 1850s, from which the French name stuck to them. At the origins of this art form were such masters as Leopold-Jules-Joseph Gelly and Hyacinthe Renier.
After the three-dimensional drawing is written out, the relief is finally brought to perfection by means of engraving to bring out fine details before the product is fired.
The author of the decor of this vase is the sculptor-fashion designer and decorator Leopold-Jules-Joseph Gelly, having entered the Sevres manufactory at the age of thirty, he worked in Sevres from 1850 to 1888. In reports on the World Exhibition in Paris in 1867, published in the Illustrated London News, they write: “… a distinctive feature of the Sèvres court is a large number of porcelain vases in a technique called pâte-sur-pâte. For 15 years, the manufactory has been organizing the production of such products, and thanks to Mr. Zheli, they have been crowned with undoubted success.” Indeed, Leopold-Jules-Joseph Gelly is recognized by many, including his contemporaries, as the developer of the “pâte-sur-pâte” technique at the Sèvres factory. Gelly was awarded a medal for his work at the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1855, where he was presented as “a sculptor of porcelain paste”.
Porcelain of the Englishman Minton and Farmor Taxil Doat
In the second half of the 19th century, a well-known rivalry arose between English and French manufacturers of pâte-sur-pâte products. Porcelain by the Englishman Minton became famous thanks to the unsurpassed work of Marc-Louis Solon, who improved the technique and created the best examples of this style. Minton invited craftsmen from France to develop porcelain production at his factory in Stoke-on-Trent.
Solon arrived from Sevres in prosperous England, fleeing the Franco-Prussian war of 1870. The French sculptor Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse worked in Minton in 1850-1855, which contributed in no small measure to the success of the English firm at the Crystal Palace Exhibition in 1851 in London.
By the time of the 1878 World’s Fair, the public thought that Minton’s pâte-sur-pâte was better than that of Sèvres. The correspondent of the Pottery and Glass Trades Journal in his review of the exhibition was not shy in his expressions: “Pâte-sur-pâte by M. Solon [Minton] completely overshadows any royal manufactory [Sèvres]… Sevres pâte-sur-pâte lacks sharpness and relief, especially when viewed from a distance of several feet, when it has the appearance of an almost opaque body against a dark background, and there is no dynamics in the depicted figures.
Taxil Doat accepted the challenge of the British press. This was helped by the development of a new slip (pate nouvelle) that responded better to the necessary layering and carving than the traditional factory recipe for hard paste. And he succeeded. It took Doath more than a year, in collaboration with Charles Lucas, to create the decor of an exquisite vase over three feet high, as detailed and thin as Minton’s work, with a nymph in transparent drapery, standing on a plinth among ornaments in the manner of the 16th-century artist Jacques Androuet Du Cerceau. The vase was well received and donated to the South Kensington Museum (Victoria and Albert Museum) by the French government.
