Small low, covered bowls with matching stands like this were used for serving soups, bouillon and other similar foodstuffs in private apartments at breakfast, through the long hours of the toilette and to ill or disabled people in bed. In France such a tureen would be called an 'écuelle' and in German it was sometimes called a 'Wöchnerinnterrine' or 'maternity tureen'. However, while they certainly were used to serve restorative foods to women after childbirth, they were much more widely used by both women and men. Some (but not this one) have covers fitted with feet, enabling this part to be reversed to serve as a plate for dealing with meat or marrow bones. They were not made as part of a dinner service, but were a standard component of toilet services. Being made for personal use, they were usually finely decorated. They were made in porcelain, silver and other materials.

The Vincennes/Sèvres factory made a variety of écuelle shapes from 1752 onwards, however this tureen and cover is very unusual as it was intended to commemorate the birth of a special baby, the Dauphin, as the heir to the French throne was always called. Queen Marie-Antoinette gave birth to her first son, Louis Joseph on 22nd October 1781, and the dolphin symbol of the Dauphin can be found on the handles of both the bowl and its stand, and a royal crown, itself with four dolphins supporting the royal symbol of the fleur de lys, forms the handle of the cover. Sadly the Dauphin died aged only seven in 1789.

Geoffrey de Bellaigue (see below) has written about the range of special items made by the Sèvres factory at this time. In anticipation of the birth, in September 1781 Jean-Jacques Bachelier, the head of the painter's workshop, was asked to design allegories and symbols appropriate to the long-awaited birth of a royal heir: 'During the period 20 Nov 1781-25 March 1782 a range of cups and a few broth-basins were fired in the enamel-kiln which were painted with dolphins, fleurs-de-lis and allegorical subjects, no doubt based on Bachelier's sketches'. As well as this ecuelle, there is a cup and saucer with similar decoration in the museum's collection, number 786-1882. These rare items with their special decoration do not appear in the factory's sales records, suggesting they were extraordinary productions, possibly commissioned directly by the crown. It's conceivable that cups and saucers were presented by the King to important courtiers and diplomatic allies to celebrate the Dauphin's birth, but the ultimate consumer of the broth bowls is an interesting point of conjecture. They may well have been intended for the use of Queen Marie-Antoinette herself.

This example has the mark of François Antoine Pfeiffer, a painter who worked at Sèvres from 1771-1800. He specialised in flowers and patterns and would have been responsible for the finely painted borders of flowers and laurel swags.

Svend Eriksen & Geoffrey de Bellaigue. Sèvres Porcelain. London, Faber and Faber, 1987