Wine Bottle Cooler

The wine bottle cooler, along with four plates (cat. 104), was part of a dinner or dessert service that would have included many additional pieces. Dinner and dessert services were among the greatest achievements of the royal porcelain manufactory. Many of the general forms for these service wares were introduced from 1753, the first service made for Louis XV and designed by Jean-Claude Duplessis (active 1745-1774). This model of wine bottle cooler with scallop-shaped handles was introduced at that time and, for the greater part of the century, became the standard model used in the production of wine bottle coolers for the greater part of the century. The shape was made in four sizes to hold a variety of bottles and glasses. The largest, for full-sized bottles of wine, was known simply as seau à bouteille (wine bottle cooler); it would probably have remained mostly on a sideboard for footmen to access when filling glasses. One size smaller was the seau à demi-bouteille, like the present example, which was made to hold smaller bottles of wine that could have been placed on the table within reach of diners so that they could serve themselves. The next size was the seau à liqueur or seau à topette, which held a decanter, and the smallest size was the seau à verre for holding an individual wine glass, bowl down.
The service pieces now at The Huntington are distinguished by the hunting scenes that are represented on them, and it is possible that the principal figure in each scene depicts the king at the hunt. A stag hunt is shown in the reserve on one side of this cooler and a duck hunt on the other. It is decorated with an overglaze pink ground with the large white shaped reserves painted in polychrome on each side. The reserves are edged by a gilt pattern of scrolls and flowering vines. It was not the first pink-ground service made. A service with floral painted reserves had been made the previous year and sold to the duc de Richelieu. See cat. 106 for plates from a later pink-ground service produced in the 1770s.
David Peters has identified a source in the Sèvres archives showing that a Parisian marchand mercier named Madame Lair is documented as having bought from the Sèvres manufactory in 1759 a group of pieces that seem to form a small service decorated with a pink ground and hunting scenes. The pieces are described variously as rozes attributs de Chasse, rozes Chasses, rozes fleurs, and fleurs Rozes. These descriptions indicate pieces with a pink (rose or roze) ground and polychrome reserves decorated with hunting scenes of figures in landscapes (the plates also have flowers in the reserves around the borders). In the factory's sale records, the full list of purchases by Madame Lair in the last quarter of 1759 included "2 Seaux a demi bouteille rozes Chasses" for 288 livres each. It is thought that the Huntington cooler is one of these two, the other being a cooler now in a French private collection. Peters lists the other known surviving items that seem to be related to this service, dated 1758 (F) or c. 1758, with a pink ground and reserves decorated with hunting or shooting scenes in landscapes framed by a gilded border of scrolls and flowering vines. See cat. 107 for a later matching seau à demi-bouteille.