Pair Of Opaline Perfume Bottles Bulle De Savon Restoration Period.

WORKSHOP OF JEAN-BAPTISTE DESVIGNES (1792–1849)
A rare pair of small ‘pebble’-shaped travelling flasks and their stoppers in
semi-translucent white opaline (known as ‘soap bubble’) with opalescent sheen. Rich polychrome and gold enamelled decoration from the Desvignes workshop, comprising a frieze of stylised palmettes and rhythmic geometric motifs in brick red and midnight blue, highlighted by gold fillets. Flat disc-shaped stoppers adorned with a radiating motif matching the fine gold.
France.Restoration Period. 
H_9 cm. 

The ornamentation of these bottles perfectly illustrates the technical virtuosity and aesthetic of the workshop of Jean-Baptiste Desvignes, a painter and decorator active in Paris in the early 1820s. Desvignes became famous for developing a unique enameling process: the application of extremely fine colors combined with matte and burnished gold, fixed at very low temperatures. This technique avoided subjecting the fragile opaline crystal (supplied here by leading manufacturers such as Bercy or the fledgling Baccarat) to excessively high firing temperatures that would have caused it to shatter.

Desvignes' decorative style, immediately recognizable on this piece, bridges the gap between the rigorous Neoclassicism of the Empire period and the lighter touch of the Restoration. It is characterized by rhythmic geometric friezes, palmettes, stylized cornucopias, or small flowers, always rendered in a highly selective palette of matte enamels—primarily midnight blue and brick red (sometimes highlighted with white). The presence of the original flat disc stoppers, essential to the purity of the design and bearing the same radiating gold decoration, makes this pair an extremely rare collector's item.