Vincennes porcelain

The entrepreneur in charge at first, Claude-Humbert Gérin, established workshops and employed craftsmen from the Chantilly manufactory, whose patron, the duc de Bourbon, had recently died.

[3] The continued patronage by Orry de Fulvy achieved the first successes on the Paris market about 1745, and further essential capitalization was raised through a consortium of twenty-one progressive-minded tax farmers.

Aside from tea wares and dinner services, and decorative vases, often in imitation of Meißen porcelain—"in the style of Saxony, painted and gilded and depicting human figures" the warrant granted by Louis XV ran—the Vincennes manufactory specialized in making naturalistic flowers, which were incorporated into bouquets or in flower sprays added to cut-glass-hung gilt-bronze chandeliers under the direction of Parisian marchands-merciers, who alone were permitted to combine the production of so many separate craft guilds.

Enamel painting was applied over the fired glazes, to be refired at lower temperature, and at Vincennes the refinement of its techniques began to approach that of miniatures.

The Vincennes workshops perfected the art of gilding applied over the already-fired glazes then re-fired at a still lower temperature, to offer luxury wares of a sophistication never before seen in France.

The procedure of introducing datemarks, and painters' and gilders' marks, which has made a detailed understanding of individual styles of Sèvres possible, was initiated at Vincennes, in 1753.