French│Empire Collection
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A small private Napoleonic collection in Sydney, Australia
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Porcelain
Sevres Comport Coupe from the 'Service Iconographique Grec’
 Sevres Compotier Coupe - 'Service Iconographique Grec’

Comport Coupe

Sevres, Manufacture Royale

1815

A Sevres comport with a border of gilt Grecian waves around the edge of a blue ‘Lapis Lazuli’ band, bordered on the interior with arches over a pattern of dots. With Sevres marks for the year 1815 made during the reign of King Louis XVIII. The 'Service Iconographique Grec' is arguably the most lavish and aesthetically successful of all the early 19th Century services produced at Sèvres. It was produced as two identical dessert services: the first finished was completed in 1811 and presented on July 13th of that year to Cardinal Fesch on the occasion of the baptism of the King of Rome. Referred to as the 'Service à Camées', it comprised of 82 component pieces.

The second service, to which this coupe belongs, was produced between 1812 and 1817, and was named after its principal source of decoration: the Iconographique ancienne ou recueil des portraits authentique des empereurs, rois et hommes illustres de l'Antiquité by Ennio Quirino Visconti (1751-1818). Originally conceived as a dinner and dessert service, the estimated expense of such an undertaking reduced the final number of pieces produced to 122 dessert wares, of which seventy-two were cameo-decorated plates. The service was entered into the factory's saleroom register on May 19th, 1817 but was displayed In the Sèvres annual exhibition at the Louvre in January of 1818, and it was not until September of 1819 that the service actually left the factory's stock, when it was delivered to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for presentation to Pope Pius VII. It is not known when, how or why the 'Service Iconographique Grec' left the papal collections, but by 1888 over half of the service had been transported to the USA and was being offered for sale at the Walnut Street shop of James B. Pooley in Philadelphia. Today, this service is scattered in museums and private collections around the world.