THERE is no continental porcelain better known by name to every one than the French porcelain of SÈvres. Nevertheless, fewer chance collectors and lovers of old china appear to know as much about it as they do about old Worcester, Derby, Chelsea, or Dresden. Over fifty marks for SÈvres, nearly two hundred and fifty marks of painters, decorators, and gilders of the SÈvres manufactory, as well as over thirty-five of the marks of some of the modelers are known. The principal marks of fabrication from 1753 to the present number some thirty-five. From this it will be seen that SÈvres forms a group in the history of ceramic art that requires some study to master its minutiÆ and the indicia that will enable the collector to pass intelligent judgment on pieces that come to his notice. While it is true that the collecting of SÈvres can hardly be a “poor man’s hobby,” it also is true that knowing something about even a single piece in one’s general collection of old china, or of less specialized antiques and curios, justifies giving attention to the ramifications of the particular phase of the subject that may, for the moment, more definitely apply to the piece in hand. Thus if one possesses a bit of modern SÈvres of fine quality, the interest of that possession cannot but be intensified by a knowledge of earlier examples of the fabrique to which it is allied.

Fatal improvements have often marked the progress of the arts. It was so with that of the Royal Porcelain of SÈvres. The early pieces were of soft paste, but in 1804 the director, Monsieur Brogniart, was so pleased with the introduction of the hard paste instead that he utterly banished the soft paste, going so far as to destroy the secret formula for its making, and burying alive, as one might say, all the soft-paste material then on hand in the Parc de Versailles! Poor, deluded mortal! Probably he died unaware of having murdered the SÈvres porcelain of the finest type! Thus one begins to understand why the examples of the pÂte tendre of the year 1753 through to the change for the hard pÂte are so rare and so highly prized.

By old SÈvres we comprehend the pieces made from 1753 to 1804. This is the true vieux SÈvres. From 1753 to 1777 inclusive the letters of the alphabet, singly, from A to Z, (W omitted), indicate the years of manufacture. The year letters were placed between the two script L’s (one reversed). The letters A, B, and C indicate the pieces made at Vincennes (the original site of the manufactory) in 1753, 1754, and 1755 respectively, while the year of the removal of the manufactory to SÈvres, near St. Cloud, 1756, is indicated by the letter D between the double L’s. The L’s, of course, stood for the royal cipher of Louis XV, the first year, and then of Louis XVI of France from 1754 to September, 1792, when the French Republic was proclaimed and R.F. in monogram or in capital letters took its place.

In the study of any porcelain pieces the amateur should acquaint himself with the difference between soft and hard porcelain of any sort. The eighteenth-century porcelain has a soft, velvety “feel,” the glaze not being so glassy as that of hard porcelain. A pen-knife can cause abrasion on soft-paste porcelain, while hard paste will nearly always repel even the pressure of a steel point drawn over it. With soft paste one can see through the glaze, as it were; with hard paste one cannot. The enamel of the soft paste of SÈvres presents a delicate, milky glaze, exquisitely distinctive. The colors, too, show forth with velvety freshness. Bleu du roi—king’s blue—is the name given the cobalt blue of the decoration; turquoise designates the sky-blue which dates from 1752, when Helbot first compounded it; rose Pompadour and rose Dubarry are the names given the reds during the domination of those court favorites; violet pensÉe, the name for the pansy color; jaune clair, the name for the pale yellow (jonquille was as often used); vert pomme and vert jaune designated the apple-green, while vert anglais and vert prÉ was applied to the color we term grass-green.

There is also a velvety “feel” about the unenameled portions of porcelain, owing to its fine texture, which distinguishes it from hard porcelain. Looked at obliquely against the light so that a portion of the white surface and a portion of the painted surface equally receive a beam, there appear no differences in surfaces. With a soft porcelain the enamel seems so to incorporate with the soft paste as to present a surface of identical substance. Hard porcelain will exhibit a distinct difference in the lustre of the white surface and in the colored glazed surface. The color surface will invariably appear less brilliant.

In SÈvres porcelain of the first period the white ground predominates. The flowers and wreathes, etc., are delicately scattered over but do not crowd the white field. In later pieces the decorations came by degree to be the more assertive. Likewise, more gilding was employed. After 1770 portraits came into the decoration, and the designs of the Louis Quinze and those of the Louis Quatorze periods were superseded by designs which followed more along Egyptian and Etruscan lines. With the soft porcelain of SÈvres very large pieces could not be produced, but of the later hard-paste porcelain huge vases were often fabricated, marvels indeed of ceramic skill, though seldom as artistic and perfect in technical qualities.

The bisque statuettes of early SÈvres eagerly sought by museums and collectors are one of the interesting phases of this manufacture, though these objects scarcely can be said to approach those of Saxony. Their manufacture at SÈvres was almost given up after 1777. We have, however, from our own day, the much-treasured statuettes modeled for SÈvres by modern sculptors, among whom was the late Auguste Rodin.

From 1778 to 1792, inclusive, the year mark was indicated by the double letters AA to OO, within the interlaced L’s. During the period of the First Republic (1792-1804) the mark was, first, the interlaced F.R. (for RÉpublique FranÇaise), then the letters R.F. with the word “SÈvres” below (“SÈvres” being written with or without the accent mark), or just the word “SÈvres,” and finally in the Consular period of this epoch “MN^le” over the word “SÈvres” (from 1803-1804). The years IX (1801), X (1802), and XI (1803) were designated by “T⁹,” “X,” and “II” in addition.

The mark of the first imperial epoch (1804-1814) was “M. Imp^le” over “de SÈvres,” two ornamental strokes below without accent mark, and then, later, the imperial eagle crowned with the legend, “Manufacture Imperiale. Sevres,” without accent mark (1810). The years XII (1804), XIII (1805) and XIV (1806) were marked by distinguishing symbols (1804 by two horizontal dashes, a dot above and one below; 1805 by two short lines aslant, a horizontal dash to the left and one to the right; the year 1806 by a mark resembling the prong of a trident, point upward).

The SÈvres marks of the second royal epoch consisted of the restored interlaced L’s of Louis XVIII and the fleur-de-lys between (1814-1823); of the interlaced C’s of Charles X, with the X between, or the fleur-de-lys or without (1824-1829); of just the fleur-de-lys (August 30th to December, 1830) and other marks in circles (1831-1834) and the cipher L.P. of Louis Philippe (1834-1848).

With the advent of the second republican epoch, 1848-1851, the “R.F.” was restored, only to be displaced by the imperial eagle (1852) with the letter S to left and “52” to the right of the eagle, and the crowned N of 1854 of the second imperial epoch (1852-1872), with the letter S to left and the year numeral to right of the N. The Third Republic brought back the “R.F.” again, followed by other marks, the one introduced in 1888 showing a potter at work, the whole within a double circle bearing the legend Nationale SÈvres Manufacture. From 1817 date marks were designated by the last two numerals of the year number only, as the date 1807, 1808, 1809, and 1810 had been designated by 7, 8, 9, and 10. The years 1811 to 1817, inclusive, had been designated by the small letters o.z, d.z, t.z, q.z, q.n, s.z, and d.s, standing, respectively, for the French onze, douze, treize, quatorze, quize, seize, and dix-sept.

The output of the SÈvres works in recent years has been very small, that institution having become a place for the education and training of French potters who will carry on the SÈvres traditions in other lines of their work. Such examples as are being made to-day take the form of presentation sets of ware especially designed and made as a gift to a potentate, a diplomat, or as a token of the French Government’s regard on such occasions as the marriage of a princess or a president’s daughter. Various quantities of it have been brought to this country at the time of expositions, and much of that has passed into the hands of the American collectors. It is still possible to pick up here and there good pieces that are genuine and thoroughly worth while.

Notwithstanding the advanced collector’s greater eagerness to collect SÈvres of the pÂte-tendre period, later SÈvres is an alluring, interesting, entertaining, and possible field for the collector to enter without discouragement, and the pieces of this later fabrique well deserve a place in the cabinet or as a decorative feature in the home of good taste.