Sèvres milk pitcher (part of a service)
date: label: date made
content: 1805
notes: label: Description
content: The pitcher comes from a service that Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) gave to his sister Pauline (1780-1825) when she established a home in Paris at the hôtel de Charost. The light lilac ground was a fashionable color in post-revolutionary France, a time when interior designers experimented with new and unusual colors and color combinations, and one of the boudoirs in the hôtel de Charost was painted in a similar color. The figure subject is painted in brown and highlighted in gold on a ground painted to imitate marble. Under the spout the subject is a centaur seated on the ground with a club raised over his right shoulder, his left hand pointing behind him.
label: Description
content: The pitcher's light lilac ground has dark purple ornament painted in overglaze enamel. A Greek key pattern is painted below the rim and at the base of the pitcher above a band of gold. The handle is heavily gilded and the interior is white with no decoration apart from a band of gold on the rim.
label: Description
content: See Liana Paredes, 2009, exhibition catalog “Sèvres Then and Now: Tradition and Innovation in Porcelain, 1750-2000”, p.73, p.148.
label: Description
content: This pitcher belongs to the Alfred Duane Pell collection in the National Museum of American History. Before Pell (1864-1924) became an Episcopalian clergyman quite late in life, he and his wife Cornelia Livingstone Crosby Pell (1861-1938) travelled widely, and as they travelled they collected European porcelains, silver, and furniture. Pell came from a wealthy family and he purchased the large William Pickhardt Mansion on 5th Avenue and East 74th Street in which to display his vast collection. The Smithsonian was one of several institutions to receive substantial bequests from the Reverend Pell which laid the foundation for their collections of European applied arts.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: France: Île-de-France, Sevres
setName: label: See more items in
content: Home and Community Life: Ceramics and Glass
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: CE.P-778D
label: catalog number
content: P-778D
label: accession number
content: 225282
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Pitcher
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: red (overall color)
label: Physical Description
content: polychrome (overall surface decoration color name)
label: Physical Description
content: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 5 3/8 in x 4 9/16 in x 2 13/16 in; 13.6525 cm x 11.58875 cm x 7.14375 cm