Style Napoleon III / Ref.13732

Manufacture de Sèvres - Pair of vases Delhi model with a polychrome floral decoration, 1875

This pair of vases was made in the Manufacture de Sèvres in 1875 as indicates the mark under the base "S75".
It is the Delhi model created in 1851 by Jules-Constant-Jean-Baptiste PEYRE (1811-1871), designer in chief of the manufactory in 1845-1848 and in 1856-1871. With a belly shape on the lower part and resting on a more narrow feet, this model with a long neck which is spreading as it extended, marked by a ring.
Our pair of vases depict a delicate polychrome floral decoration on a plain white background and of which each part is limited by a gold edging.

Under the direction of Victor Regnault, the production of the Manufacture de Sèvres has pulled away from the Empire inspiration to explore a modern technologic potential. This is how the pasta on pasta, the cross-linked pasta or trompe-l'oeil decoration were created. However, after the resignation of Victor Regnault in 1870, the new Republic Parliament threatened to cut the manufactory budget if reforms were not set up. Thus, the direction of the manufactory was given to the chemist and painter Louis Robert until his retreat in 1879 and an improvement commission was created in 1871. It's the ceramist Théodore Deck – member of the commission and a few years later director of the manufactory between 1887 et 1891 – who settled in 1875 a program for the reorientation of the esthetic choices and the creation of new technics executed by Carrier‐Belleuse and the chief chemist Alphonse Louis Salvetat (1846‐1880) then Georges Vogt (1880‐1891). This program promised the creation of a china closer to the oriental pasta allowing colors better glazed, the use of Chinese type transparent and opaque enamels in limited numbers, and the research of the copper red. From 1880, technical progresses are noticed and new decoration styles are spotlighted.
The manufactory production under the Third Republic mostly answers to orders for embassies, ministers and other public and prestigious buildings. Nevertheless, vases stay the masterpiece of the manufactory production which develops the highest creativity to constantly renew the sizes and the models.

A pair of the same model vases is conserved in the Mobilier National and illustrated on Second Empire et IIIe République, de l'audace à la jubilation de Brigitte Ducrot, published in 2008 in the collection Sèvres, une histoire céramique.