Acquired by Jeanne (Bécu) Gomard de Vaubernier, comtesse du Barry, mistress of Louis XV in 1771, this is the fourth service bought for or by Madame du Barry while at Court. It is likely to have been intended for use at the château de Louveciennes which was given to Madame du Barry by Louis XV in 1769. The service is notably the first of its type to feature a monogram and neo-classical motifs. A drawing of two designs for the decoration of the service are preserved in Paris and are annotated 'Projet d'un service pour être exécuté à Sève pour Md^e du Barry, 1770' and 'à Madame, le Comtesse du Barry en son hotel à Paris.¹ The service was still in the possession of Madame du Barry at the time of her execution during the Revolution on 8 December 1794. Her effects were later confiscated and dispatched to the Ministry of the Interior in 1796 and the service was recorded still at the Ministry in 1810.

The service comprised 322 pieces which included eight different types of seaux, of which 36 were seaux à verre, at a cost of 60 livres each. During the 1770s the use of individual wine-glass coolers became more common as the fashion grew for intimate dinners with less servants in attendance which may explain the high number of seaux in this service

Two substantial parts of the service have been sold by Christie's; the first on 13-18 June 1887 (property from the Late Earl of Lonsdale, which included later additions to the service), see lots 534-540, which included fifteen seaux à verre échancrés. The second significant dispersal of the service was at Christie's, London on 30 October 1947, see lot 52 which included seven seaux à verre échancrés. Two seaux à verre échancrés, one of which was a Paris example of du Barry service-type, was sold at Christie's, London on 3 June 2015, lot 58. See also the seau à verre échancré illustrated by Linda Roth and Clare Le Corbeiller, French Eighteenth-Century Porcelain at the Wadsworth Atheneum, The J. Pierpont Morgan Collection, Wadsworth Atheneum, 2000, pp. 265-6, no. 137. For a full discussion of this service and later Paris porcelain additions, see David Peters, Sèvres Plates and Services of the Eighteenth Century, Little Berkhamsted, 2015, Vol. II, pp. 471-474.

1. This is in the Bibliothèque de l’Institute, Paris (Ms 2057), and it is attributed to Augustin de Saint-Aubin, an illustrator and engraver and a member of the Académie.