Two-handled Covered Cup

The cup and saucer are made according to the eighteenth-century model of a gobelet à lait (see cat. 102 for a discussion of this model). However, this example appears to be made of hard porcelain, and the painted and gilded decoration is stiff and deliberate in design and execution, lacking any rococo imagination or variety, all indications that the piece was made during the nineteenth century.
Anomalies in the markings also suggest a nineteenth-century date. The cup has the incised mark ap that could be for the répareur Nicolas-Alexandre Percheron, who was active at Sèvres between 1827 and 1864. However, it also is marked in blue enamel with the crossed Ls of the eighteenth-century royal manufactory and the mark of four dots along the center axis of the Ls that was used by members of the Armand family. Louis-Denis (?) Armand was a flower painter at Sèvres between 1768 and 1778, and there was a répareur, Alexis Pépin, who worked in hard paste from 1773 and may have used the mark ap. The painted mark also includes a letter E between the Ls for the date 1757. That date is incompatible with the material (hard-paste porcelain was not made at Sèvres before the late 1760s) and the active dates of both Armand and Pépin. The painted marks are also remarkably precise and even in their delineation that is uncharacteristic of marks painted in the eighteenth century. It is probable, therefore, that the cup was made in the nineteenth century with Percheron as the répareur and that it was painted with marks in imitation of eighteenth-century examples.