Plate from the Encyclopedic Service: The Charcoal Works
Sèvres Manufactory, painted by Jacques-François-Joseph Swebach (1769-1823) · 1805-1806
The rim carries a gilded frieze of running scrolls and palmettes on white, and the centre holds a small landscape painted entirely in shades of brown. Inside a wooden fence near the edge of a forest, charcoal burners are at work. A man on a ladder leans against a cone-shaped kiln; two women and a child stand beside it; in the foreground one man with a shovel and another with a pick finish coating a second kiln with earth. Behind are a house, neat stacks of timber, a goat and two bundles of firewood. The painter signed SW at lower right, and the back is inscribed number eighteen, charcoal works, with the red stamp of the imperial manufactory of Sèvres.
The plate belongs to the Encyclopedic Service, a set on which Sèvres illustrated the arts and trades of France in the spirit of Diderot's Encyclopedia. Napoleon gave this service to Hugues-Bernard Maret, his secretary of state and future Duke of Bassano, and it stayed with the family for two centuries. Hugues Lepic gave the plate to the Louvre in March two thousand seven in memory of the Countess Lepic, granddaughter of the last duke.
Did You Know? The service pictured the trades of France on the dinner table, here charcoal burners building their earth-covered kilns.
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