A double for Sèvres
A pair of princely refreshers and a plate design for Louis XVI caught the eye.
At more than double the estimate, €84 ,500 , this pair of topette buckets illustrates the art of living of Louis-René-Édouard, Prince de Rohan-Guéménée (1734-1803). It comes from his dessert service commissioned in 1771 – the year he was appointed ambassador extraordinary to the Viennese court by Louis XV – and delivered the following year. Depending on needs, Sèvres produced a variety of rafraîchissoirs, adapting them into buckets for ordinary bottles, half-bottles and finally topettes – a long, narrow flask – or liqueurs. The crenellated buckets were designed to stabilize glasses, which were plunged into them upside down. The future cardinal’s 368-piece service included six topette buckets. One is in private hands, while the other three are in American institutions, at the Milwaukee Museum of Art (Wisconsin) and the Toledo Museum of Art (Ohio). The latter owns a copy bearing the mark of Antoine-Joseph Chappuis, active from 1761 to 1787. Comparison of the decorations allows us to attribute our pair to the same hand. A similar success, at €52,000, was achieved by a sample plate (diam. 23.5 cm), designed for the ” arabesque service ” created for Louis XVI. Marked by the painter Nicolas Schradre or Schrader, active at Sèvres from 1773 to 1785, it is dated 1782. It corresponds in every respect to a watercolor drawing in the Manufacture’s archives : centered on an antique figure in grisaille in a medallion with a blue background surrounded by a parasol motif, it is adorned on the wing with three braids with rinceaux on a blue background, a frieze of grecques in green and florettes on a purple background.
