Sèvres Porcelain and Imitations. From Adoration to Deceit

“Sèvres is a cultural phenomenon that includes manufacture, imitation, emulation (making something just as good), replacement of breakages, imitations, deliberate falsifications and the entire history of the brand and style known as SÈVRES,” Hermitage Director Mikhail Piotrovsky says. “With such a historical and cultural approach, any object becomes interesting. And that is what the creators of the exhibition make them.”

Altogether, the Hermitage is displaying more than 150 items: vases, tableware and pieces of porcelain sculpture. They include:

• pieces undoubtedly made at the Sèvres factory during its heyday in the 18th and first half of the 19th century
• pieces created by the craftspeople of Sèvres in the early 20th century using 18th-century moulds
• pieces produced at Russia’s Imperial Porcelain Factory and the factory in Arkhangelskoye belonging to Prince Borisovich Yusupov in imitation of Sèvres originals
• questionable pieces, whose origins are still in doubt
• fakes produced by factories in France and elsewhere in Europe with the sole intention of deceiving people

Among the gems are items from the Cameo Service produced to a commission from Catherine II for Prince Grigory Potemkin, Madame du Barry’s service, and cups bearing the portraits of King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette that are decorated with enamel.

The main aim of the display is to demonstrate the difference between the Sèvres masterpieces and imitations of them.

The exhibition curator is Yan Ervinovich Vilensky, senior researcher in the State Hermitage’s Department of Western European Applied Art, keeper of European porcelain.

The exhibition can be visited by all holders of tickets to the Main Museum Complex.

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The history of the Sèvres porcelain factory began in 1740, when a small porcelain manufacturing facility was established at the Château de Vincennes close to Paris.

Initially, the items produced at Vincennes were strongly influenced by the output of the Meissen factory. That situation changed very quickly, however. The quantity and variety of articles made grew, and by 1756 the premises at the château became too cramped for the expanding production line. The factory moved to Sèvres, the Parisian suburb where it remains to this day. People at the time rapidly came to appreciate the wonderful combination of colour and shape, elegance and fragility in its products, the richness and originality of their decoration. Other factories in Europe and Russia were already beginning to imitate Sèvres porcelain.

We should not look down upon the use of Sèvres motifs in the choice of decoration and shapes by other manufacturers who adapted them to their own artistic ends, guided by their own taste and technical capabilities. One example of such borrowing can be seen in articles from the Imperial Porcelain Factory, including a monteith modelled on one of the tableware designs in the most celebrated Sèvres masterpiece – the Cameo Service. When producing their own piece, the craftsmen of the Saint Petersburg manufactory did not set themselves the goal of fully reproducing the decoration. The Russian example differs in the choice of colour scheme: instead of a turquoise background, a combination of purple and brown shades was selected.

There would also seem to be entirely legitimate grounds for the copying as precisely as possible of Sèvres prototypes that was carried out at the Imperial Porcelain Factory from the 18th century through to the beginning of the 20th. The imitations were produced not for purposes of deception, but in order to polish the factory’s own abilities or else to replace losses. The making of additions to the celebrated Sèvres tableware ensembles continued throughout the entire imperial era in the factory’s history. As late as the early 20th century, pieces were being produced in imitation of the Green Service and the Cabbage Leaves Service.

Another example is provided by porcelain vases in the exhibition. For a long time, it was believed that they Napoleon Bonaparte had presented them to Alexander I together with two similar pieces that are now in the Pavlovsk Palace museum. The Hermitage vases were also considered to have been produced at the Sèvres factory. Research has shown, however, that they deviate significantly from the Sèvres standards: the shape is not perfectly ovoid, being greater in diameter, the bronze handles are longer, and there are differences in the background.

From an examination of the Inventory of Items Kept in the Hermitage since 1786 drawn up by the court servant Ivan Lukich Lukin, specialists discovered that the two vases that so strongly resemble Sèvres pieces were in fact “from the state porcelain works, presented to the Sovereign Emperor Alexander I by Actual Privy Councillor and Order-Holder Guryev”.

It is a known fact that Sèvres prototypes were also used at Nikolai Yusupov’s private factory on the Arkhangelskoye estate west of Moscow. Russian craftsmen trained their eyes and hands through copying the original pieces. A comparison of the works makes it obvious that the imitators did not succeed with the deep blue colour, while the shades of the floral decoration turned out a little paler. On the plate from Arkhangelskoye, the bouquet of roses in the centre is painted with less detail and is inferior to the Sèvres version in the rendition and in the diversity of different shades.

Our own contemporary, the outstanding researcher Antoine d'Albis, who was for many years the head of the laboratory at the Sèvres factory, stated: “Nowadays, of a hundred items bearing the Sèvres mark, ninety are imitations or evoke doubts.” Most often scholars find themselves dealing with imitations and replacement pieces, later additions of new decoration to old items.

Difficulties with attribution have always existed. That is why any kind of “reassessment of mistakes”, whether in the form of exhibitions or of conferences, lectures and publications is extremely important. In recent decades, due to the openness of the world’s cultural community, the development of the Internet and the production of high-quality images, masses of information have appeared that were previously unavailable to researchers. The display in the Blue Bedchamber of the Winter Palace is yet another attempt to draw attention to the problem of attributing copies and imitations of the products of the celebrated Sèvres factory.

A scholarly catalogue (State Hermitage Publishing House, 2023) has been produced for the exhibition.