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Pot à sucre or boîte à sucre
View: Front
Sugar bowl and cover
Pot à sucre or boîte à sucre
French
1754
Object Place: Europe, France
Medium/Technique
Soft-paste porcelain (pâte tendre) with a turquoise ground (fond bleu céleste), decorated in polychrome enamels and gold
Dimensions
8.5 cm (3 3/8 in.)
Credit Line
Gift of Rita and Frits Markus
Accession Number1983.640a-b
NOT ON VIEW
CollectionsEurope
DescriptionThe bowl is tulip-shaped, and the cover low domed with a finial in the form of a flower (carnation?) with stem and leaves. The flour oval panels (two on the cover and two on the bowl) reserved on the turquoise (bleu céleste) ground are framed in sprays of palm leaves with flowers at the top and the bottom and sprays of flowers at each side, all in chased and tooled gold. Each of the panels is decorated with a spray of mixed flowers. On one side of the bowl are two full-blown roses, that on the left a bluish lavender color shaded with puce, that on the right, yellow shaded with light brown; an anemone (?) in pink is above these, with a spray of pink florets below and another of blue to the right; the green leaves are delicately outlined and shaded on all panels. In the cover cartouche above (in the same illustration), similar blue florets descend to the left from a yellow rose and pink flower. In the cartouche on the other side of the bowl, the blue florets are in front of a large pink rose (to the right) and a large yellow flower with puce edges, and a spray of puce florets descends to the right. On the cover, the two larger flowers are blue (left) and pink, and the ascending florets to the left are deep purple. The flower finial is touched with puce, and the leaves and stem are gold. The edges of both the cover and the bowl are ornamented with rounded gold dentils, and the foot ring has a plain gold band.
Marks
(1) on base of bowl, in blue enamel: interlaced Ls enclosing date letter B above painter's mark, a fleur-de-lis
(2) on base of bowl, incised: 4
(2) on base of bowl, incised: 4
ProvenanceParis; 1966, Rita and Frits Markus; 1983, gift of Rita and Frits Markus to the MFA.