Shapely Bodies: The Image of Porcelain in Eighteenth-Century France

317 Pages·2013·5.17 MB·English

by  Christine A. Jones

Shapely Bodies
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Studies in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Art and Culture
Advisory Board to the University of Delaware Press Board of Editors
Sarah R. Cohen, General Editor
Wendy Bellion * Martha Hollander * Christopher M. S. Johns
William L. Pressly * Amelia Rauser
Michael Yonan
Art and Culture in the Eighteenth Century Antoine Watteau: Perspectives on the
edited by Elise Goodman Artist and the Culture of His Time
edited by Mary Sheriff
Dugdale and Hollar: History Illustrated
by Marion Roberts From Sacred to Secular: Visual Images in
Early American Publications
Piety and Politics: Imaging Divine Kingship by Barbara E. Lacey
in Louis XIV’s Chapel at Versailles
by Martha Mel Stumberg Edmunds Performing the “Everyday”: The Culture
of Genre in the Eighteenth Century
Changing Minds: The Shifting Perception edited by Alden Cavanaugh
of Culture in Eighteenth-Century France
by John C. O’Neal T he Artist as Original Genius: Shake-
speare’s “Fine Frenzy” in Late-Eigh-
Utility and Beauty: Robert Wellford and teenth-Century British Art
Composition Ornament in America by William L. Pressly
by Mark Reinberger
Caricature Unmasked: Irony, Authenticity,
From Savage to Citizen: The Invention of and Individualism in Eighteenth-
the Peasant in the French Enlighten- Century English Prints
ment by Amelia Rauser
by Amy S. Wyngaard
Decorative Games: Ornament, Rhetoric,
Abstraction and the Classical Ideal, and Noble Culture in the Work of
1760–1920 Gilles-Marie Oppenord (1672–1742)
by Charles A. Cramer by Jean-François Bédard
Jacques-Louis David: New Perspectives Shapely Bodies: The Image of Porcelain in
edited by Dorothy Johnson Eighteenth-Century France
by Christine A. Jones
Caravaggio: Realism, Rebellion, Reception
edited by Genevieve Warwick
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Shapely Bodies
The Image of Porcelain in
Eighteenth-Century France
Christine A. Jones
UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE PRESS
Newark
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Published by University of Delaware Press
Co-published with The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706
www.rowman.com
10 Thornbury Road, Plymouth PL6 7PP, United Kingdom
Copyright © 2013 by Christine A. Jones
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any
electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems,
without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote
passages in a review.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Jones, Christine Anne, 1969–
Shapely bodies : the image of porcelain in eighteenth-century France / by Christine A.
Jones.
pages cm — (Studies in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century art and culture)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-61149-408-2 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-61149-409-9 (electronic)
1. Porcelain—Social aspects—France. 2. Art and society—France—History—18th
century. 3. Porcelain industry—France—History—18th century. I. Title.
NK4373.J66 2013
738.20944'09033—dc23
2013002435
™
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Printed in the United States of America
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For my grandfather,
Michael Angelo LaRocco,
who crafted all his life
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Porcelain, a worthy matter,
Her beauty works to charm and flatter,
From the land of blue and white,
For the eye a pure delight.
She wears her splendor with such ease!
Her pedigree is Chinese.
(Allons à cette porcelaine,
Sa beauté m’invite, m’entraîne,
Elle vient du monde nouveau,
L’on ne peut rien voir de plus beau.
Qu’elle a d’attrait et qu’elle est fine!
Elle est native de la Chine.)
Anon., 1716
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
List of Illustrations xiii
Introduction: Accessorizing France 1
Chapter 1 Louis XIV’s Porcelain Folly 35
Chapter 2 Chemistry 71
Chapter 3 Couture 105
Chapter 4 Character 141
Chapter 5 Intimacies 165
Chapter 6 Louis XV’s Porcelain Fetish 185
Postscript: Porcelain Revolution 237
Bibliography 253
Index 271
About the Author 287
vii
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Acknowledgments
This book, much like its subject—French porcelain in eighteenth-century
culture—quietly made its way into existence as a casual interest and then
emerged one day as an obsession. Out of fairy tales they came—an incidental
garniture de cheminée that leapt off the page one day. Porcelain? In a seven-
teenth-century French fairy tale? How? Why? An innocent enough question
with what turned out to be many, many threads of answers, some artisanal
and others academic, that wove through time and embroidered for me a new
fabric of French cultural politics.
My literary past did not prepare me for the aesthetic pleasures or the full
range of intellectual challenges that attend the contemplation of objects, but
it did give me the tools to find extraordinary meaning in the written materi-
als that French porcelain inspired. Much of my work took place in libraries
around books. If I found interest in what early French porcelain objects
looked like, I admit to being carried away, moved further toward apprecia-
tion, by how people wrote about them. Small things, sometimes quite ordi-
nary things, were deemed remarkable for the unlikely composition of their
bodies and how they had been molded against all odds into such intriguing
shapes. In the eighteenth century, porcelain objects occupied the minds of
writers from fairy tale conteuses and travelers to lexicographers, satirists, and
encyclopedists. These documents brought me into the world of porcelain
manufacture in France, and the rich trade history I pieced together from
them, for its part, finally brought me out of the library and into museums full
of things and visual arts that feature them.
ix
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