The Tiffany Reed & Cie retailer's mark inscribed on these striking coupe shape plates...
The Tiffany Reed & Cie retailer's mark inscribed on these striking coupe shape plates (and matching cups and saucers listed elsewhere) dates them precisely to the first few years of the 1850's--when the Gothic Revival was still underway in France and designers found inspiration in styles between the Dark Ages and the Renaissance. There being no surviving fine ceramic dinner ware of the period, ceramists imaginatively took period metal work and to some degree medieval manuscripts as models.
Here the influence of metalwork is most apparent, a bronze colored ground underlies a gilded field that creates a ring of pointed arches. In the gilt areas between the arches, white pansies with brilliant blue brushstroke foliage recall the colors of medieval enamels as well as floral detail from manuscripts. The pointed arches receive borders and elaborate flourishes at their tips executed in line work so fine that it resembles ornamentation engraved into a metal surface.
In art and literature the French Gothic Revival presented romantic visions of a distant past either as reflections of or alternatives to the turbulence in France at the time. In decorative works such as this we find a sense of a precious preserved beauty, a new object for the table or curio of an antiquarian connoisseur.