CIRCA 1769, ONE WITH BLUE INTERLACED BLUE L MARKS ENCLOSING DATE LETTER Q, PAINTER'S MARK FOR JEAN-JACQUES PIERRE (LE JEUNE), INCISED CT, THE SECOND WITH GREY INTERLACED L MARKS ENCLOSING DATE LETTER Q, PAINTER'S MARKS FOR GUILLAUME NOEL

A number of services and wares with decoration known as 'rubans bleu céleste' are recorded in the Sèvres Sales Registers during the period 1769-75, however the design is closely associated with a service delivered in December 1769 to Jean-Baptiste Buffault, a banquier, who was acting as intermediary in the purchase of the service for Madame du Barry, mistress of Louis XV. A number of additional items described as 'rubans bleu céleste' were purchased in the name of Madame du Barry in 1770, with further items acquired through Buffault, possibly as supplements or replacements for damaged items. The 1769 delivery to Buffault included 96 assiettes of different types at 42 livres each. A reference in 1771 to the sale of a service to 'sieur Bufau, pour L'Angleterre' suggests that this service may have been returned to Buffault¹ and then sold to a buyer in England, see David Peters, Sèvres Plates and Services of the Eighteenth Century, Little Berkhamsted, 2015, Vol. II, p. 429. Peters notes that three of the four services decorated in rubans bleu céleste that were sold during this period, appear to have had English owners in the 18th century, perhaps as a result of the popularity of the design following the resale of the service by Buffault to a buyer in England.²

A substantial part of the 1769 service (including some 1770-71 replacements and supplements) was sold at Sotheby's, London on 7 November 1985, lot 142. It was sold again at Sotheby's, Zurich on 5 December 1991, lots 285, 286 and 288-290, which included 44 assiettes unies, the majority dated 1769. A further substantial part of the service is in a British private collection, which includes 36 assiettes unies, again mostly dated 1769. An assiette unie from this service dated 1769 in the Zieseniss Collection was sold at Christie's, Paris, on 5-6 December 2001, lot 238. Two assiettes unies dated 1770 are in the collection of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris (Inv. 27.681 and D31883).

1. The service rubans bleu céleste was replaced in 1771 by another service, commissioned directly by Madame du Barry, and decorated with her initials.

2. These include three services, all sold in the early 1770s. All three had originally, or subsequently had British owners, including the Duke of Dorset and the Earl of Egremont, of Petworth House.

Guillaume Noël was a painter of flowers and patterns at Sèvres from 1755 to 1807 and Jean-Jacques Pierre (le Jeune) was a painter of flowers and patterns and gilder at the manufactory from 1763 to 1800.