This over-sized serving charger is from a table service by the French Jules Vieillard manufactory featuring far eastern scenes framed in the shape of Japanese folding fans.

Three fans appear along the edge of the brown transfer-printed charger--each turned at a different angle to create a slightly undulating flow around the plate. In the large top fan we find costumed figures engaged in an intriguing conversation. Fans on the lower left and right are decorated with flowing floral sprays.  Connecting the fans is a figured band suggestive of a silk brocade.

One must note the printed fan mark on the backside. In a tortured script intended to suggest Japanese characters we have "JVaBx" for Jules Vieillard a Bordeaux--all contained within yet another fan-shaped field.

We have seen reference to the pattern as "Eventails" or "Fans." While this seems self-evident, we have not encountered examples so marked.

Fans were a central object of obsession for the followers of the late 19th century Japanese mania. We see them decorating interior walls, for example, in well-known portraits by Monet and Manet. In ceramic decorations we find fans depicted with other Japanese objects as well as fan shaped fields containing scenes or exotic patterns. Here the flat shapes of fan leaves contain images undistorted by folds, but the sticks are included lest we miss the point.

The Vieillard works in Bordeaux were a continuation of the pottery founded by immigrant Irishman David Johnston who introduced English style earthenware and transfer printing to France in the mid 1830's. Jules Vieillard took over operations in 1845 and in 1865 turned the pottery over to his sons who continued under the same name until 1895. The second Vieillard generation is known for inventive, often whimsical, excursions into the Japanese style. 

Other examples of this pattern are available from Seekers Antiques. Elsewhere on this site are listed a single dinner plate and a set of ten dinner plates each featuring different vignettes within the fan-shaped fields .  Contact us for information on other individual plates in stock.