Soft-paste Porcelain Service Decorated With Scenes Of Children Reveling In Wine, Attributed To Vincennes, 18th Century

Soft-paste porcelain tea set consisting of a lidded teapot, a sugar bowl, and four cups with three saucers.

Each piece is hand-decorated with delicate Watteau-inspired genre scenes depicting figures in rural landscapes. The borders are accented with an elegant gold-beaded fillet.

The decoration is particularly remarkable for the variety of its scenes depicting children. The young figures are depicted sharing wine or beer, toasting, drinking, or playing around barrels, in a spirit that is both playful and moralistic, inspired by the 17th-century Dutch tradition and highly prized in 18th-century French decorative arts.

The reverse bears a mark painted in blue under glaze, suggesting the Vincennes manufactory, pending definitive attribution.

A beautiful set representative of French production during the Louis XV period, combining the delicacy of soft-paste porcelain with a decoration of great freshness.

Dimensions: height (teapot) – 14 cm, diameter (cup) - 6 cm, height (teapot) - 6 cm, diameter (cup) - 12 cm.

The sugar bowl is missing its lid and has a small chip on the rim. The teapot has a fine crack. One cup has important chip, other cups show fine cracks, mainly around the handles; some of these are likely due to the firing process. One saucer has a chip; the others have slight cracks. Moderate wear on the gilding and slight signs of use.