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This oyster plate carries hand-painted seashells and drifting seaweed on white porcelain, touched with gold. From Pouyat, a 19th-century Limoges firm, it reflects the Belle Époque taste for nature and the sea. Read its story.
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Jean Pouyat founded the family's porcelain company in Limoges in 1842. Its roots lie in faience-making in nearby Saint-Yrieix, and the Pouyat line is said to have owned kaolin deposits by the end of the eighteenth century. Here the white porcelain becomes a pale sea floor beneath the painted shells, a tide pool held still.
Made in 1906, it comes from the years when Paris restaurants such as Maxim's gained new splendor and cachet. Pieces like this were made for fine dining, and here the shellfish would rest on a bed of painted shells.
Soft underwater flora sways through the design, every frond laid down with a painter's brush. Gilding painted by hand picks out the accents, warm beside the cool marine motif, and glints like sunlight on shallow water.
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