-
Pot a sucre Hebert
Evans, Étienne - Enlarge image
Pot a sucre Hebert
- Object:
Sugar basin
- Place of origin:
France (made)
- Date:
1758 (dated)
- Artist/Maker:
Evans, Étienne (painter (artist))
Sevres (maker) - Materials and Techniques:
Soft-paste porcelain, painted in enamels and gilded
- Museum number:
276&A-1876
- Gallery location:
British Galleries, room 118a, case 6
Object Type
This sugar bowl and its companion jug are from a tea service with a matching tray. Such sets are known as 'cabarets' in Britain, where they were usually for one or two people, and as déjeuners in France, where they were sometimes equipped with four cups. Eighteenth-century accounts of tea drinking in France indicate that the tea was made very strong in a small pot, and then diluted with hot water before being drunk. Tea was drunk with hot or cold milk and sweetened with white sugar. It is unlikely, however, that these pieces were ever used by Horace Walpole, their first owner, for anything other than display.
People
The service was bought by the writer, designer and collector Horace Walpole on a trip to Paris in 1765-1766. On this trip he spent more than £400 on porcelain and confessed that he bought china faster than he could pay for it.
Trading
Walpole purchased these pieces some years after they were made, so he probably bought them from the stock of a Paris dealer, rather than as new pieces from the factory. Continental porcelain could not be legally imported to Britain until 1775 unless it was declared to be for private use and not for sale.
