Table service
Gaspard Robert Factory
Category
Ceramics
Date
1765 - 1775
Materials
Faience
Order this imageCollection
Saltram, Devon
NT 870803
Summary
Part dinner and dessert service
Full description
This part dinner and dessert service is made from a type of ceramic usually called faience in France – a speciality of the factory of Gaspard Robert in Marseilles. Each pot was covered in a white tin glaze, which provided the perfect canvas for the vivid green painted decoration, which includes the Parker family armorial crest. The service is covered in sprigs of flowers, sprouts, animals and fish. Gaspard Robert had clients in England, though this service is a rare survival. In 1777 one of the factory’s employees records a visit by the future King Louis XVIII, in which he was shown a similar service that had been made up for an English client, ‘a full table service with several separate parts ready to go to England, the shape and unusual size of soup tureens, trays and terrines caught his attention.’ The service is thought to have been commissioned by John Parker for use at Whiteway and was at Saltram by 1894.
Provenance
Accepted in part payment of death duties by HM Treasury from the executors of Edmund Robert Parker,4th Earl of Morley (1877-1951) and transferred to NT in 1957.
Makers and roles
Gaspard Robert Factory, pottery and porcelain manufacturer
References
Patricia Ferguson, 2016, Ceramics: 400 Years of British Collecting in 100 Masterpieces, pp. 130-131; Danielle Maternati-Baldouy, 1997, Faïence et porcelaine de Marseille, XVIIe-XVIIIe siècles: Collections du Musée de la faïence de Marseille,, pp. 195-197, p. 264; Robin Fedden, 1976, Treasures of the National Trust, fig. 113, p. 142.