Fine Pair of Ormolu and Sèvres-Style Porcelain Tazze by Beurdeley

#18252: Fine Pair of Ormolu and Sèvres-Style Porcelain Tazze by Beurdeley
Beurdeley (French, founded 1818)
French, late 19th century
Height 19.5cm, width 27cm, depth 27cm


This pair of French tazze dates from the late nineteenth century and combines Sèvres-style porcelain bowls with gilt bronze stands by the Parisian maker Emmanuel-Alfred Beurdeley. Each stand is of tripartite form, cast in the Rococo taste with sinuous C-scrolls and acanthus foliage, hung with flowering garlands and rising from a shaped triangular base on scrolled foliate feet. The three supports meet at a beaded circular collar carrying the bowl, and a pair of openwork handles extends from the sides, each modelled as a scrolling acanthus branch terminating in a cluster of fruit and flowers.
The bowls are of shallow shaped-circular form with scalloped rims, painted with a ground of bleu céleste. Each centre carries a portrait medallion within a gilt border, one depicting Marie Antoinette in a pink gown with a white fichu, a rose held at the breast, the other a lady in a lace ruff and pearls with a jewelled star, identified as Marie de' Medici. The medallions are encircled by white reserves painted with ribbon-tied floral garlands in pink, blue, yellow and lilac, the ribbons rendered in bleu céleste with gilt beading and looped in a continuous serpentine band around the well.
The borders carry gilt scrollwork, diaper and trellis patterns, with a band of foliate ornament running below the rim and a further gilt border to the outer edge. The reverse of each bowl is painted with the same turquoise ground, gilded at the foot.
The Beurdeley firm was established in Paris in 1818 and passed through three generations, taking its name in this period from Emmanuel-Alfred Beurdeley, who directed it from 1875 until 1895. The house worked in the eighteenth-century manner, producing furniture and gilt bronze after Louis XV and Louis XVI models, and showed at the international exhibitions of the later nineteenth century.
The undersides bear pseudo-Sèvres interlaced L marks enclosing the letter S. The gilt bronze stands are stamped 'BY' beneath a crown and numbered '6'.
$18,000