Details
Finely painted in colors with large bouquets of fruits and flowers, within chased gilt surrounds, the wide green borders gilt with floral swags and wreaths with gilt dentil rims, the tray with feuille-de-choux, comprising:

A two-handled lobed tray with ribbon handles (plateau 'à baguettes'), 15 in. (38.1 cm.) long
A teapot and cover (theière 'Calabre', groupe C), 434 in. (12 cm.) high
A sugar-bowl and cover (pot à sucre 'Bouret', 2ème grandeur), 378 in. (9.8 cm.) high
Two cups and saucers (gobelets 'litron' et soucoupes, 3ème grandeur), 478 in. (12.4 cm.) diameter, the saucers
Provenance
The Collection of Edith M. K. Wetmore and Maude A. K. Wetmore; Parke-Bernet Galleries, Inc., on the premises sale, Chateau-sur-Mer, Newport, Rhode Island, 18 September 1969, lot 779.
Anonymous sale; Sotheby's, New York, 11 October 1995, lot 305.
Literature
Linda H. Roth and Clare Le Corbeiller, French Eighteenth-Century Porcelain at the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, 2000, no. 96, pp. 204, footnote 17.
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Lot Essay

The shape name for the distinctive tray supporting the present tea service varies. The name plateau à baguettes is found in the manufactory’s description of a clearly identifiable service of 1773 made for Prince Paul Petrovich of Russia, Catherine the Great’s son. Also recorded in the 18th century as a plateau ovale polylobé, the shape was known in the 19th century as a plateau à rubans.

Examples are to be found at the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford (inv. 1917.1063), the center painted with landscapes on a colorful ribbon trellis ground, the ochre, red, and green ribbons enclosing blue and carmine oeil de perdrix; and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (object no. 58.75.103) as the foundation of a bleu nouveau déjeuner of 1775 painted with military scenes by Jean-Louis Morin, comprising a tray, two cups and saucers, a sugar-bowl, and a three-footed cream-jug instead of a teapot, the military scenes in the same spirit as those on the gobelet ‘litron’ and saucer in the Hart Collection offered in this sale.

A turquoise-ground déjeuner with the same shaped tray was sold Vincennes and Sèvres Porcelain from New England Collection sale, Christie's New York, 5 May 1999, lot 52.

Bertrand was active at Sèvres as a painter of flowers between 1757-1775.
Jean-Pierre Boulanger was active at Vincennes and Sèvres 1754-1785 as a gilder and a painter specializing in patterns.

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