Soup plate, tin-glazed earthenware, floral decoration painted with in-glaze colours and enamels, Tournai porcelain factory, about 1760-1770

Circular plate (soup plate), the centre painted with a bouquet in colours, and the border with scattered bouquets and with floral pattern in 'bianco-sopra-bianco'

Purchase. Formerly Fétis collection.

Acquired as St Amand-les-Eaux and illustrated as such in Arthur Lane, French Faïence, 1948, pl. 34A, where dated to the mid-18th century. Reattributed to Tournai by Robert Charleston, who noted an identically similar plate in the Musée Céramique at Sèvres, which had the mark of a tower on the reverse.

P.J.Fauquez founded a faience factory at Tournai in 1698. He closed it in 1725 when he moved to Saint-Amand-les-Eaux, where he had founded a branch-factory seven years earlier. Enamel colours were introduced at that factory in 1760. By this time the tower mark at Tournai was reserved for only the finest porcelain productions.

120-1887