Form: Dessert Plates
Components: 12 Dessert Plates
Decoration: These plates all have gilded edges along with some gilding in the interior pattern. Shoots of red and yellow flowers sprout from the small portrait to the left of the plate's central design, depicting a young man and woman in a garden. The gilding frames the young people like a gazebo.
Colors: Gold, white, red, yellow, green
Markings: Limoges France
Date: 20th C.
Provenance: Dutchess County Estate
Size: 6.5"
Weight: 4.8lbs
Condition: These plates are in excellent condition with a few plates displaying minor chips at the edges in the gilt. The chips are never larger than two centimeters in diameter.Meta: Dinnerware, China, Porcelain. Gilt
History: Limoges had strong antecedents in the production of decorative objects. The city was the most famous European centre of vitreous enamel production in the 12th century, and Limoges enamel was known as Opus de Limogia or Labor Limogiae. Limoges had also been the site of a minor industry producing plain faience earthenwares since the 1730s.The manufacturing of hard-paste porcelain at Limoges was established by Turgot in 1771 following the discovery of local supplies of kaolin and a material similar to petuntse in the economically distressed area at Saint-Yrieix-la-Perche, near Limoges. The materials, which were quarried beginning in 1768, were used to produce hard-paste porcelain similar to Chinese porcelain.The manufactory at Limoges was placed under the patronage of the comte d'Artois, brother of Louis XVI, and was later purchased by the King in 1784, apparently with the idea of producing hard-paste bodies for decoration at Sèvres, although this never happened.After the French Revolution a number of private factories were established at Limoges, including Bernardaud and Haviland & Co. Limoges maintains the position it established in the 19th century as the premier manufacturing city of porcelain in France.