Sèvres porcelain cup and saucer
date: label: date made
content: 1813-1814
name: label: maker
content: Sevres
notes: label: Description
content: TITLE: Sèvres porcelain cup and saucer in the Egyptian style
label: Description
content: MAKER: Sèvres Manufactory
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content: PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
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content: MEASUREMENTS: Cup H. 1 7/8 x W. 4 3/16, 4.7cm. x 10.6cm; saucer D. 5 11/16, 14.4cm.
label: Description
content: OBJECT NAME: Cup and saucer
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content: PLACE MADE: Sèvres, France
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content: DATE MADE: 1813
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content: SUBJECT: Art
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content: Domestic Furnishing
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content: Industry and Manufacturing
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content: CREDIT LINE:
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content: ID NUMBER: P-1069ab
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content: COLLECTOR/ DONOR: Alfred Duane Pell.
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content: MARKS: Manufacture Imperiale Sèvres, Imperial eagle, printed in red.
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content: This richly decorated cup and saucer is shaped in the early nineteenth century Empire style, introduced to the Sèvres manufactory by Alexander Brogniart, the immensely talented administrator appointed to run the manufactory in 1800 following the upheavals of the French Revolution. The cup and saucer comes from a breakfast (cabaret) tea service that was a gift from Empress Marie-Louise, the second wife of Napoleon Bonaparte, to her lady-in-waiting, Marie-Madeleine Léjéas-Carpentier, Duchess of Bassano.
label: Description
content: In 1798 Napoleon Bonaparte sailed to Egypt with a large team of scientists, engineers, artists, and scholars appended to his army of about 20,000 troops who occupied Lower Egypt and chased the Mamluk Turks*, then rulers of the country, into Upper Egypt. Known as the savants, these men studied and recorded all that they saw of both ancient and modern Egypt. As an artist, art collector, and antiquarian, Dominique Vivant Denon marveled at the sites of Egyptian antiquity and recorded in drawings everything that he could get down on paper while traveling with a battalion of the French army into Upper Egypt. His drawings, later engraved and first published in the Voyage dans la Basse et la Haute Egypte in 1802, are still a valuable record of Egypt’s ancient sites before the archaeological excavations of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the construction of the first and second Aswan Dams.
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content: Napoleon’s campaign was not a military success. His fleet was destroyed by the British at the Battle of Abū Qīr Bay near Alexandria on August 1, 1798, thus isolating the French army on land in Egypt and restoring British control of the Mediterranean Sea. His team of scientists, engineers and artists, however, were undoubtedly successful in bringing new knowledge of ancient Egypt to Europe and America. Denon’s Voyage dans la Basse et la Haute Egypte was a very successful publication and the spirited account of his experiences was soon translated into English and other languages.
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content: Most of the decoration on the cup and saucer can be sourced to an illustration in Denon’s Voyages. The motifs can be seen on plate 117, Frises emblematique de different Temples égyptiens (Emblematique friezes in various Egyptian Temples) in which Denon’s original drawings are reproduced on the page. On the cup and saucer the motifs are modified, but on the exterior of the cup the falcon god Horus with wings unfurled resembles closely parts of the frieze recorded in Denon’s original drawings. The papyrus and lotus frieze on the saucer can also be seen on plate 117 of the 1829 edition of the Voyages (available online at NYPL Digital Collections). The two plants grew together on the banks of the Nile, and carried important symbolic meanings in Egyptian religious belief and in the state system where they represented the unification of the lower (papyrus) and upper Nile regions (lotus). Papyrus of course had great value as a material source for the making of paper and other items necessary in everyday life, and the young shoots of lotus and papyrus were eaten. The vertical “columns” on the cup and saucer are simplified versions of papyrus designs represented in Denon’s illustration. The borders on the rim of both the cup and saucer that carry a white five-pointed “star”with a red center can be seen in Owen Jones’ Grammar of Ornament on plate VII, number 30. The interior of the cup is gilded, and so is the handle with a green enamel chevron design in a leaf form. The exterior decoration is painted over a platinum ground, an early and rare example from the Sèvres manufactory.
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content: Egypt fascinated the Greeks and Romans centuries before this cup and saucer was made in France. The Romans were great producers and consumers of things, and through their knowledge of Egyptian culture they “Egyptianized” their own villas, temples, and grand monuments with objects taken from Egypt itself, or made in imitation of Egyptian models. Through the centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire evidence of ancient Egypt slipped into obscurity, even in Rome itself as the city of imperial grandeur crumbled into ruin. Not until the European Renaissance, beginning in the fifteenth century, was the earlier fascination with Egypt revived, and by the late eighteenth century the process of rediscovering ancient Egypt was greatly enhanced by travelers from Europe documenting and publishing their experiences. Designers, artisans, and manufacturers were quick to pick up on the mystifying motifs, hieroglyphs, and iconic remains from Egyptian antiquity. The work of Denon and his fellow artists, scientists, surveyors and engineers, followed by the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs in the early-to-mid 1820s by the French linguist Jean François Champollion (1790-1832) brought to life the academic pursuit of Egyptology from which we have learned so much. Their discoveries also intensified popular interest in ancient Egypt that sparked the popular movement known as Egyptomania.
label: Description
content: This cup and saucer 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.
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content: * Mamluk. Originally an army of slaves recruited in the 9th century Abbasid Caliphate (Mamluk means “owned” or “slave” in Arabic), the Mamluks (or Mamelukes) became powerful military rulers in the Islamic world, notably so in Egypt until 1811.
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content: Information on the provenance of the cup and saucer was obtained online from the Paris dealership Royal Provenance: http://royalprovenance.com/?p=1.
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content: Bob Brier, Napoleon in Egypt, exhibition catalog Hillwood Art Museum, Brookville, New York: 1990.
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content: Bob Brier, Egyptomania: Our Three Thousand Year Obsession with the Land of the Pharaohs, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
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content: James Stevens Curl, Egyptomania, the Egyptian Revival: a Recurring Theme in the History of Taste, Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1994.
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content: Egyptomania: Egypt in Western Art 1730-1930, exhibition catalog, National Gallery of Canada with the Louvre, Paris, 1994.
label: Description
content: Liana Paredes, 2009, Sèvres Then and Now: Tradition and Innovation in Porcelain 1750-2000.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: France: Île-de-France, Sèvres
setName: label: See more items in
content: Home and Community Life: Ceramics and Glass
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content: Industry & Manufacturing
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content: Art
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content: Domestic Furnishings
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: CE.P-1069ab
label: accession number
content: 225282
label: catalog number
content: P-1069ab
objectType: label: Object Name
content: cup
label: Object Name
content: saucer
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: hard-paste porcelain (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: polychrome enamels and gold (overall color)
label: Physical Description
content: Egyptian revival (overall style)
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content: red (cup color)
label: Physical Description
content: red (saucer color)
label: Physical Description
content: polychrome (component surface decoration color name)
label: Physical Description
content: egyptian motif (joint piece description of decoration)
label: Physical Description
content: egyptian motif (overall description of decoration)
label: Physical Description
content: ceramic, porcelain (cup material)
label: Physical Description
content: ceramic, porcelain (saucer material)
label: Measurements
content: overall cup: 1 7/8 in x 4 3/16 in x 3 7/16 in; 4.7625 cm x 10.63625 cm x 8.73125 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall saucer: 3/4 in x 5 11/16 in; 1.905 cm x 14.44625 cm