ance until
his death in 1847. In the hands of Brongniart the establishment at
Sevres became at once a school of research and a centre of practical
accomplishment--the influence of which was felt throughout Europe. Its
products were obviously inspired by the demands of successive French
monarchs and their courts. It ministered to the grandiose ideas of
Napoleon, who demanded pieces that were to speak of his victories, and
after every campaign a fresh table service or new suite of vases was
produced to commemorate the emperor's successes. The most striking piece
of this kind was the vase made to commemorate the marriage of Napoleon
and Marie Louise in 1810. It was designed by Isabey and was modelled
with figures in bas-relief. The principal group contains not less than
115 such figures, while the subsidiary group, representing the
acclaiming populace, contains between 2000 and 3000 figures. This vase
was three years in making, and is said to have cost something like
L1250. Unfortunately this was not a solitary example of the productions
of Sevres, for under every successive government of the 19th century the
factory has been called to produce enormous vases which are to be found
in the rooms or corridors of every palace and museum in France, and
while these pieces represent wonderful technical skill, both in their
manufacture and the decorations with which they are covered, very few of
them possess either spontaneity or charm. They are correct, frigid,
cold, and compare most unfavourably from the artistic point of view
with the masterpieces of oriental pottery.

Everything was carried out on the grand scale, and once again the
influence of Sevres became paramount in Europe, and its styles of
painting and decoration were eagerly followed from 1830 to 1870 by all
those European potters who were attempting to make anything beyond
useful domestic wares. As an instance of its aims in the period between
1830 and 1850, large sums were spent in the production of great slabs of
porcelain many feet in area; on which were painted copies of some of the
famous portraits and other pictorial masterpieces in the galleries of
the Louvre. A number of these are preserved in the museum at Sevres, and
must always excite admiration and even wonder at their technical
accomplishment.

The most noticeable invention of Sevres in the middle part of the 19th
century was the _pate sur pate_ decoration in which porcelain clays of
various colours are