Description
18th Century Sceaux French faience snuff box. Good hinge, metal mounts reglued, no restoration or major damage to Faience pieces, small glaze flakes on bottom
corners and one small glaze flake on front right edge. 5.25" x 4" x 2.25"
Sceaux ware, tin-glazed earthenware and porcelain made at a factory in Sceaux,
Fr., from 1748 to 1794. Both were skillfully painted in a large range of enamel
colours with landscape and figure subjects and with minutely exact flowers and
birds. Cupids in pink outline derived from the paintings of François Boucher
were typical of the period of Louis XV. Pieces decorated with naturalistic
flowers, fruit, and the like in relief may have been modeled by Richard Glot,
who purchased the factory in 1772.
Faience, or tin-glazed and enameled earthenware, first emerged in France during
the sixteenth century, reaching widespread usage among elite patrons during the
seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, prior to the establishment of
soft-paste porcelain factories. Although characterized as more provincial in
style than porcelain, French faience was used at the court of Louis XIV as part
of elaborate meals and displays, with large-scale vessels incorporated into the
Baroque garden designs of Versailles. Earlier examples of French faience attest
to the strong influence of maiolica artists from Italy. Later works demonstrate
the ways in which cities such as Nevers, Rouen, Lyon, Moustiers, and Marseille
developed innovative vessel shapes and decorative motifs prized among collectors
throughout Europe.
While faience can be created from a wide mixture of clays, it is foremost
distinguished by the milky opaque white color achieved by the addition of tin
oxide to the glaze. French faience is typically divided into two types. Grand
feu (high fire) describes pieces that have been decorated with glaze and
metallic oxides before being fired a single time at a high temperature of around
1650°F (900°C). Petit feu (low-fire) faience, developed in the second half of
the eighteenth century, refers to a process whereby the clay body is fired
before being glazed and decorated with metallic oxides and then fired again at a
lower temperature; pieces can also go through a third firing. Grand feu pieces
have a more limited color palette that consists of blue, yellow, brown-purple,
and green. By contrast, the lower firing temperature of petit feu faience
enabled both greater precision in painting techniques and variety in the range
of colors.
tw108
