. Pottery and porcelain, from early times down to the Philadelphia exhibition of 1876 . , heart,mind, hand, and gold, are lavished in folly and vice, which finally cul-minated in the social and political Eevolution of Louis XVL, when kingand noble, lord and lady, went under in a sanguinary- flood of anarchyand ruin. Could the taste and the art which prevailed at Sevres escape this \It could not, and it did not. While, therefore, we cannot but admire the care, the pains, the skill,of the workmen and the artists, let us not be misled by the false gla-mour of that time, so as to learn to love or
. Pottery and porcelain, from early times down to the Philadelphia exhibition of 1876 . , heart,mind, hand, and gold, are lavished in folly and vice, which finally cul-minated in the social and political Eevolution of Louis XVL, when kingand noble, lord and lady, went under in a sanguinary- flood of anarchyand ruin. Could the taste and the art which prevailed at Sevres escape this \It could not, and it did not. While, therefore, we cannot but admire the care, the pains, the skill,of the workmen and the artists, let us not be misled by the false gla-mour of that time, so as to learn to love or to imitate their florid andextravagant tastes in architecture, in furniture, in dress, or in por-celain. Chaffers, in his work upon Pottery and Porcelain, gives the pri-vate marks of some one hundred and twenty-six painters, who wereemployed at Sevres before 1800, and quite a number who have paintedthere since. Among these are some who reached a European reputa-tion: of these Boiicher is perhaps most famous; his medallions aresought for, and highly valued. 262 POTTERY AND Yvi. XiA.—Enameled Sevres Vase, called -Vase GenicaiUt. A distinction is sometimes made between old Sevres and modernSevres. The old—vleux iSevres—comes down to the year 1800; afterthat it is designated as modern, for convenience. It does not intend to S^VJ2ES porcelain: 203 exalt one and condemn the other, as too many now are apt to think,the truth being that equally good work has been done since that timeas before it. Indeed, within this year I have seen some pieces of Sevres paint-ing, such as I fancy have never been done there before, and which canhardlv be excelled; in which the artist ceases to be a copyist, abandonshimself to the imagination, and produces work which gratifies the liigh-est faculty. Somebody, then, has broken away from traditions and aca-demic rules. Xot oidy were the early painters ranked as artists, but designersand modelers of vases and other pieces had high rank and
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1870, bookpublishernewyo, bookyear1878
