A Paris (Schoelcher factory) porcelain green-ground ‘cameo’ tea and coffee service, circa 1815

In the early nineteenth century, the Paris porcelain manufactories were heavily influenced by the latest fashions emerging from Sèvres, where painters developed innovative enamel decorations inspired by hardstone cameos. The present service is contemporary with the celebrated Service Iconographique Grec (1811-1818), decorated with named cameo portraits reserved against bleu lapis enrichi d'or grounds. Produced in two closely related versions, the first was completed in 1811 and presented to Cardinal Fesch on 13 July of that year during the celebrations surrounding the baptism of the King of Rome, Napoléon II, son of Napoléon I and Marie-Louise. Known as the Service à Camées, its eighty-two pieces are discussed by Pierre Verlet in Les Grands Services de Sèvres, the catalogue of the 1951 exhibition at the Musée national de Céramique, Sèvres (p. 48, no. 23). The second version, produced between 1812 and 1817, derived much of its decoration from Ennio Quirino Visconti's Iconographie ancienne, ou recueil des portraits authentiques des empereurs, rois et hommes illustres de l'Antiquité. Comparable in spirit is a Sèvres déjeuner with a faux-malachite ground, painted by Antoine Béranger with cameo medallions after antique gems from the Bibliothèque du Roi, which was presented by Louis XVIII to Caroline, duchesse de Berry, in 1816.

A Schoelcher sugar bowl painted in this manner is illustrated in Régine de Plinval de Guillebon, Faïence et Porcelaine de Paris, Dijon, 1995, p. 413, pl. 405.