Lifestyle
SIMPLY LIVING FRANCE
PAGE 8
French Porcelain
F
ounded in 1773 by Jean-Baptiste Locre, Porcelaine de Paris was one of the first manufacturers to use the Chinese secret of porcelain. It immediately aimed for the luxury trade, selling to the Royal Courts of Europe. But even then, a part of its production was utilitarian: such as wine coolers, fruit baskets, vases etc. French porcelain has a history spanning a period from the 17th century to the present. The French were heavily involved in the early European efforts to discover the secrets of making the hard-paste porcelain known from Chinese and Japanese exports. They succeeded in
developing soft-paste porcelain, but Meissen porcelain was the first to make true hard-paste, around 1710, and the French took over 50 years to catch up with Meissen and the other German factories. But by the 1760s, kaolin had been discovered near Limoges, and the relocated, royal-owned Sèvres factory took the lead in European porcelain design as rococo turned into what is broadly known as the Louis XVI style
