Manufacture De Locré - Fruit Bowl Shell Decorated With Bouquets Of Flowers - 18th Century

Porcelain shell compote dish, with polychrome decoration of detached bouquets and gilt threads and combs. Marked: crossed torches in blue, manufacture of Locré. Eighteenth century. It was in 1773 that Jean Baptiste Locré bought his studio Rue de la Fontaine au Roi. He was born in 1726 into a wealthy family, being the son of a textile merchant of Saxon origin. By renting his land, he had his workshop and ovens built in 1772. On July 14, 1773, he registered his mark in the registers in the form of two crossed blue arrows. In the same year, he joined forces with Laurent Russinger who became his second, mastering the technique of hard porcelain. In 1787, Locré was ruined because of manufacturing costs. He sells it to Russinger who moves it to build new workshops. Also ruined, Russinger sold the factory to the Pouyat family, however he remained at the head of production. The year 1810 marks the death of Russinger and Locré, gradually causing the bankruptcy of the factory. In 1820, the ovens of the first workshops went out. In 1825, Jean Marx Clauss revived the factory in premises rented from Alexandre Dodé, son-in-law of Russinger. The Locré factory saw three generations of Clauss pass by before being taken over by Achille Bloch in 1887.