18 décembre 2023
d'Abrigeon Pauline, « The French Quest for Chinese Enamels: New Perspectives on Chinese Enamelling in the 19th Century from the Archives of the Manufacture de Sèvres », HAL-SHS : histoire de l'art, ID : 10670/1.k6dohc
At the beginning of the 18th century, François Xavier Dentrecolles, a French missionary, provided unique insights into the porcelain industry in Jingdezhen, China. The letters he wrote at that time became the most frequently-used references in the Western world. To this day, his writings are frequently consulted by scholars in order to understand the terminology, use, and techniques of enamelling during the Kangxi and Yongzheng periods of the Qing dynasty. About a century later, the French ceramics factory of Sèvres sent its agents on field trips to China in an attempt to understand and emulate the techniques of the Chinese porcelain industry. From the 1840s onwards, the factory collected a great deal of material and knowledge about enamelling, and also carried out the first laboratory analyses. The study of the specimens collected at the factory and of the records of these expeditions has yielded much new knowledge about the techniques and the circulation of enamels in China. This paper examines how the archives of the Sèvres factory can provide new reference material on the use of enamels in Guangzhou and Jingdezhen.