This book provides a guide to the history of SSvres porcelain as epitomised by seventy of the most important examples in the Royal Collection.

The British Museum collection of French porcelain numbers almost 300 pieces. This fully illustrated catalogue includes descriptions and discussions of many pieces which have never before been published.

Encompasses an impressive and engaging variety of fabulous objects from the most important faïence centres, dating from the late sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth century.

J. Paul Getty began to collect French decorative arts in the 1930s and continued to do so until his death in 1976. The Museum’s collection has continued to grow since then at a rapid pace and contains over three hundred individual pieces at the time this book is published. This volume illustrates fifty of them. The selection represents a cross section of the collection, which covers the period from approximately 1660 to 1800. In the eighteenth century it became fashionable in Parisian society to decorate the interiors of houses with Far Eastern materials such as lacquer and porcelain. This taste was catered to by the marchands-merciers, members of a guild who combined the functions of the modern interior decorator, the antique dealer, and the picture dealer. These men devised highly ingenious settings for Far Eastern porcelains to adapt their exotic character to the French interiors of the period. Information about them and their clientele has been used in cataloguing the Getty Museum’s collection of mounted oriental porcelain, which is large and of high quality. This book is not a catalogue, nor is it a mere picture book or checklist. Each piece has been chosen because it represents a particular aspect of the crafts involved in the production of objects that were made by Parisian craftsmen for the crown, the nobility, and the rich bourgeoisie. The pieces are arranged in chronological order. Translations of the French archival extracts, an index, and a concise bibliography have been provided.

Throughout the eighteenth century, France was a place of intense scientific enquiry and innovative research. One of the most exciting discoveries of the period was the successful manufacture of porcelain. Known as 'white gold', porcelain was produced for use in all aspects of fashionable public and private life; from banquets to boudoirs, from tea drinking to the toilette. Of all the factories in France, the most renowned was the Royal Porcelain Manufacture at Sevres. The protection of Louis XV and the patronage of his mistress, Madame de Pompadour, drew to Sevres the best alchemists, designers and artists in Europe. The porcelain they produced was unequalled in quality, design and decoration. French Porcelain explores this extraordinary period through the V+A's own superb collection.

It is the experience probably of most Western amateurs of porcelain to pass through three successive stages of development in their appreciation of an art which, even for the uninitiated, --for those who have no knowledge of its history and little understanding of its technical aspects, --is not lacking in charm and fascination.--pg. xiii.

Every two years the fall issue of the Met's quarterly Bulletin celebrates notable recent acquisitions and gifts to the collection. Highlights of Recent Acquisitions 2012–2014, which will be published in early November, include the promised gifts of the Leonard A. Lauder Cubist Collection; the lavishly illustrated manuscript known as the Mishneh Torah, by celebrated medieval philosopher Moses Maimonides; paintings by turn-of-the-century Symbolists Ferdinand Hodler and Vilhelm Hammershøi; a superb viola by Jacob Stainer, whose instruments were favored by the Bach and Mozart families; and a magnificent Roman porphyry vessel that is one of the finest to survive from Classical antiquity. This publication also honors the many generous contributions from donors that make possible the continued growth of the Met's collection.