A royal gift: the 1826 porcelain jewel cabinet

Magazine Antiques, Sept, 1994 by David Revere McFadden, Deborah Sampson Shinn

Sovereigns have long recognized the utility of gifts to solidify diplomatic and familial alliances, commemorate important events, and highlight the prestige and wealth or the donor. In general, state gifts are chosen to represent superior design and craftsmanship. Historically, they are unique documents of their time, distilling and encapsulating the aesthetic and economic milieu in which they were made. Certainly this is true of the massive "secretaire a bijoux,"(1) or jewel cabinet, that Charles X of France presented to Francis I (1777-1830), king of the Two Sicilies, on June 29, 1830.(2)

The last Bourbon king, Charles X had been crowned in traditional splendor in 1825 at the cathedral in Reims, France, ushering in a period of elegance in taste and conservatism in politics. During his short reign, Charles distinguished himself as a generous patron(3) who reasserted the splendor and opulence of his royal ancestors through the decorative arts, including commissioning elaborate silver-gilt wares for his coronation and impressive porcelains from the royal manufactory at Sevres.

The jewel cabinet, completed at Sevres in 1826, is covered with delicately painted and gilded porcelain plaques and exceptional gilt-bronze mounts. Intended to hold "a lady's jewels and other valuable accessories,"(4) it is fitted with seventeen mahogany drawers with gilt-bronze pulls.(5) The carcass is mahogany, with the front of the base resting on two molded porcelain columns. The porcelain plaques are elaborately decorated with a variety of motifs, ranging from flowers and butterflies to allegorical figures and precious objects. The reverse sides of the large plaques on the front of the doors are marked in underglaze blue with the monogram of Charles X, used at the factory between 1824 and 1830.

The subject of the large central cameo on the right-hand door is Venus, the Roman goddess of love, at her toilette. A dove, a symbol of Venus, perches on her footstool. The cameo is encircled by a wreath of colorful blossoms alternating with small cameo portraits, the whole edged with pearls and colored gemstones within a gilded framework. The eight smaller cameos represent Venus and members of her court, each with appropriate attributes: Paris; one of the three Graces; Mars; another Grace: Orpheus; the third Grace; and Vulcan, lover of Venus. The flowers include anemones and various kinds of roses (traditionally associated with Venus), as well as tulips, dahlias, and asters.(6)

The central cameo on the left-hand door shows Psyche, beloved of Cupid, bathing at a river bank. This cameo, too, is surrounded by a wreath of flowers and eight smaller cameos, here depicting gods and goddesses from Psyche's story: Jupiter, Juno, Cupid, Mercury, Pluto, Ceres, Psyche herself, and Minerva. The wreath includes roses, geraniums, periwinkles, irises, kalmias, and lilies.

Above each of the central medallions, the front panels are painted with a laurel garland, four birds, and a small blue-and-white cameo plaque. The plaque above the Venus medallion depicts a group or cherubs imitating the goddess and members of her court paying tribute. The plaque above Psyche depicts cherubs acting out the roles of Cupid and Psyche and their attendants. Beneath the central medallion on each door is an elaborate composition made up of gilded scrolls, cherubs, nesting birds, and an overflowing jewel casket ornamented with a blue-and-white plaque. The plaque beneath Venus possibly depicts Leda and the swan, and the casket contains such luxury goods as a cut-glass bottle, a gem-set ewer, a folding fan, a purse, a diadem set with cameos and pearls, jeweled hairpins, and a pink ribbon. The casket beneath Psyche contains a jeweled parure in its box, a glided mirror draped with a delicate lace shawl, a peacock-feather fan, and hard-stone vases.

While impressive in its scale and complexity, the basic design of this cabinet follows the traditional scheme for furniture intended for both storage and display. Early seventeenth-century French cabinets were fitted with multiple small drawers and frequently enriched with ornamented doors, and they were often supported on bases made up of a plinth on columns.(7) The use of porcelain plaques to decorate furniture dates from the mid-eighteenth century,(8) but in the early years the size of the plaques was limited by the problems of warping, shrinkage, and cracking encountered in firing flat pieces of soft-paste porcelain. Sometimes large panels of Chinese enamel on a metal base were used to simulate porcelain plaques.(9)

The 1826 jewel cabinet was part of a series of porcelain-mounted furnishings conceived and supervised by the diligent and ambitious Alexandre Brongniart (1770-1847),(10) the guiding force at the Sevres factory between 1800 and 1847. The son of the fashionable architect and ornamental designer Alexandre Theodor Brongniart (1739-1813), the younger Brongniart was raised in an atmosphere that encouraged the arts. He was also a student of chemistry, natural history, and mineral engineering. Among the major changes he made at Sevres was abandoning the soft-paste body for hard paste, which was easier to handle, fire, and decorate, thus reducing the amount of wastage and allowing the porcelain decorators a much larger palette of enamel colors.