Milk Jug (pot à lait ‘à trios pieds’)

This pear-shaped jug originally held milk to accompany hot tea. Milk, served warm or cold, could be added to one’s beverage to change the temperature and make the bitter flavor of strong tea more palatable; because this particular jug lacks a cover, it likely held chilled milk. The jug is part of a tea service composed of a matching teapot, sugar bowl, tray, and a cup and saucer. All pieces in the set are ornamented with a rose ground color and a continuous pattern of gold, white, and blue pointille (dots) and contain large reserves, or areas reserved for imagery, filled with floral still lifes or intricately rendered birds of paradise. The milk jug has one large reserve on its belly, featuring a colorful bird standing on a log.

The factory and artist marks, which appear on the bottom of each piece in the tea service, combined with the rose ground color raise several questions about the dating of the tea service. The factory mark seems to belong to the Royal Manufactory of Sèvres’s precursor, the Vincennes Manufactory, which operated between 1740 and 1756. However, the artist’s mark identifies Buteux fils cadet as the set’s primary painter; he never worked at Vincennes. The rose-colored glaze, which dominates the surface of the entire service, came into production in 1757 at Sèvres. These three distinct, datable elements of the porcelain set do not clearly align, thereby making it challenging to accurately date this porcelain service. The quality of the painted ornamentation and sculpting, however, indicate that the Sèvres Manufactory did produce this set of wares. Perhaps, this tea service is simply a late-18th-century, rose-colored version of an earlier service produced at Vincennes.

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