An impressive large Sèvres pâte-sur-pâte vase 1896-7

by Taxile Doat, signed, decorated in white pâte-sur-pâte on a blue ground with three panels of Diana, Pomona and Bacchus within a shaped foliate cartouche in green pâte-sur-pâte divided by pendant blossoming branches beneath a simulated wrought iron band at the shoulder, all over a celadon slip ground, one panel signed T. Doat, factory date code S.96 within an oval inside the neck, the base affixed with a paper label inscribed "N. 18, un vase de Lesbos, ornaments et figures en pastes d'applications par T. Doat".

The present vase corresponds to an entry in the Sèvres sale records:

"1 Vase des Lesbos 1ere [grandeur] fond vert clair ornements et figures pâte blanche dans des médaillons vert foncé 'Fêtes automnales'", with figures by Taxile Doat, sale price 3.500 francs (MNS archives, registre Vr', 1ere série, volume 5, folio 197 verso)

The lack of a factory decorator's mark, and the absence of gilding on the vase, might suggest that the piece was decorated in Doat's own private atelier. For this to be the case however two apparently identical vases would have had to have been made, which seems somewhat unlikely.

The complex technique of pâte-sur-pâte decoration was described by Taxile Doat thus in his seminal work, Grand Feu Ceramics (translated by Samuel Robineau):

"When the design has been traced over the [first coat of] colored slip, either with a pencil or a pouncer, it is covered with slips of white paste laid in successive coats and of different thicknesses according to the effects to be obtained. The water is absorbed by the raw body and the paste is gradually deposited. When the desired thickness is acquired, the paste, throughly dry, is modelled with an iron dented chisel such as is used in metal engraving. During the firing the coloring oxide of the under paste penetrates the white applied paste according to its coloring power and gives it in the thin parts a transparency which remindes one of the precious effects of cameo.... Colored pastes being opaque are naturally mat after firing. To give them the necessary brilliancy and glassy finish they must be covered with a glaze, which will preserve them from the injuries of time, and distinguish them from the bas reliefs made in the Wedgwood style".

The technique was first developed at the Sèvres manufactory around 1849 and commercial production was refined in the 1850s, notably by Léopold-Jules-Joseph Gély, and from 1857 by Louis Solon, who moved to England, and the Minton factory, in 1870.  Taxile Doat (1851-1938) joined Sèvres in 1879 working both for the factory, until 1905, and in his own studio. In 1909 he went to America and worked at University City, Missouri, until 1914-5, when he returned once more to his atelier at Sèvres.

The present vase, with its classical figure panels, is a good late example of a historicist style which had been popular at Sèvres for the last quarter century, but which would change dramatically over the next five years as the factory, and Doat, embraced a more 'modern' art nouveau style - a style which is hinted at in the borders and foliate decoration on the present vase. Classical figure subjects did not however entirely disappear from Doat's repertoire, as evidenced by a stoneware plaque decorated with a female figure attended by cherubs, very close in design to the Pomona panel on the present vase, which was exhibited at the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in 1906, the catalogue illustration reproduced by Alastair Duncan, The Paris Salons 1895-1914, Vol. IV, p. 189.

We are grateful to Tamara Préaud for her assistance in the cataloguing of this lot.