Pair of Double Salt Dishes (Paire de salières) (1790): Art, History and Details

Pair of Double Salt Dishes (Paire de salières) (1790) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Sèvres Porcelain Factory (French, est. 1756).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This double-salt cellar was added to a 525 piece dinner and dessert service commissioned by French King Louis XVI and known as the guirlandes de barbeaux (garlands of cornflowers) service. Between 1783 and 1790 broken or damaged objects from this service were replaced on an annual basis. Objects in this service were made of both soft and hard-paste porcelain, the latter made possible by the discovery of the ingredient kaolin in France in 1768-69.

Object facts

• Title: Pair of Double Salt Dishes (Paire de salières)
• Date: 1790
• Creator attribution: Sèvres Porcelain Factory (French, est. 1756)
• Culture: France, Sèvres
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: Hard-paste porcelain with enamel and gilt decoration
• Dimensions: Overall: 3.5 x 12.4 x 7 cm (1 3/8 x 4 7/8 x 2 3/4 in.)
• Collection: Decorative Arts
• Department: Decorative Art and Design
• Accession number: 1964.519

A detail from the museum

This double-salt cellar would have held salts as well as a variety of spices such as pepper, nutmeg, and cinnamon.

Collection credit

The Norweb Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• Musée national des châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon. Versailles et les tables royales en Europe: XVIIème-XIXème siècles. Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 1993.
• Miller, Markus, and Andreas Dobler. Königliches Porzellan aus Frankreich: Sammlerstücke und Service der Manufaktur Vincennes/Sèvres. Eichenzell: Hessische Hausstiftung, Museum Schloss Fasanerie, 1999.
• Peters, David. Sevres Plates and Services of the 18th Century. Hertfordshire: D. Peters, 2005.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.