Set of plates of soft-paste, dark blue ground, richly gilt and painted in polychrome with divinities in clouds in the centre of each plate and with putti in clouds in oval reserves on the border. The name of the divinity is inscribed in the reserve at the top.

Each plate, which has a slightly concave border and a gently scalloped gilded rim of alternating large and small scallops. The gilded frieze is formed by arabesques incorporating cone-shaped vases of fruit, garlands, flower-heads and acanthus scrolls, which emerge out of the foliate oval bands framing the reserves. The broad gold band round the perimeter of the well is tooled with fruit, foliage and repeating whorl-like shapes, entwined with a ribbon. The frames of the reserves are tooled with oblique hatching between double lines, the hatching interrupted at the centre of the top and the bottom by a pastille within a square frame.

The divinities represented are Flora, Ceres, Pomona and the nine muses: Clio (History), Euterpe (Lyric Poetry), Thalia (Comedy and Idyllic Poetry), Melpomene (Tragedy), Terpsichore (Choral Dance and Song), Erato (Erotic Poetry and Mime), Polymnia (Sublime Music), Urania (Astronomy) and Calliope (Epic Poetry).

The plates have been identified as conterfeits; the porcelain is genuine Sèvres soft paste and the ground colour is authentic but the gilding and painting are later enrichments. Use of soft paste porcelain was discontinued at Sères in 1804. The plates were obtained by agents in 1812 who employed a Swiss enameller, Philippe-David Soiron fils, to paint the ladies in imitation of pre revolutionary style. Soiron does not set out to deceive but rather to confuse by using distinctive marks; his ‘signature’ is accompanied by interlaced ‘LL’s, the forged eighteenth-century mark of the Sèvres manufactory and his personal mark, for the most part, took the form either of an ‘S’ followed by four short strokes or of an ‘S’ followed by four dots and sometimes his name is spelled out in full. These were not the only items so treated. A déjeuner was presented to Louis XVIII at the Restauration which, it was claimed, had belonged to his brother, Louis XVI. In 1818, when the manufactory was asked to authenticate the set, the counterfeiting was identified.

Text adapted from French Porcelain: In the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen, London, 2009