{"meta":{"version":"2.1","_links":{"self":{"href":"https://api.vam.ac.uk/v2/object/O295333"},"collection_page":{"href":"https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O295333/"}},"images":{"_primary_thumbnail":"https://framemark.vam.ac.uk/collections/2014GX9293/full/!100,100/0/default.jpg","_iiif_image":"https://framemark.vam.ac.uk/collections/2014GX9293/","_alt_iiif_image":[],"imageResolution":"high","_images_meta":[{"assetRef":"2014GX9293","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false},{"assetRef":"2014GX9314","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false},{"assetRef":"2014GX9309","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false},{"assetRef":"2006AU4993","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false},{"assetRef":"2011EW2121","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false},{"assetRef":"2017JX4440","copyright":"©Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false},{"assetRef":"2018KY5598","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false}]},"see_also":{"_iiif_pres":"https://iiif.vam.ac.uk/collections/O295333/manifest.json","_alt_iiif_pres":[]}},"record":{"systemNumber":"O295333","accessionNumber":"4246:1, 2-1856","objectType":"Sugar bowl","titles":[],"summaryDescription":"This lidded basin was almost certainly a bowl for sugar because its decoration matches a French teapot of the same date (also in the V&amp;A). This suggests both were part of the same tea service. The sugar in this bowl was served in lumps, as there is no hole pierced in the lid to accommodate a spoon. Unlike seventeenth-century sugar boxes, this bowl has no lock, which reflects the falling price of sugar during the eighteenth century.\nThe delicately-cast festoons of flowers and leaves around the bowl and lid, and the fasces (a bound bundle of rods) ornament around the rim of the lid are common decorative motifs found in books of ornament designs in the first half of the eighteenth century. This is a refined and restrained example of a decorative style labelled 'rococo' by nineteenth-century art historians. The rococo style developed across Europe in the first half of the eighteenth century. It was a style characterised by the use of ornament designs drawn from the natural world, particularly flowers, leaves and marine motifs such as shells. These types of ornament are present around the bowl and lid of this example; the finial on the lid combines curving, cast cockle shells with a central cabbage-like motif.\nLidded sugar bowls, typically in the form of small pots like this one, were known as 'pots de sucre' in eighteenth-century France. They were usually placed on a low stand and the one for this bowl has been lost. There is a similarly-shaped sugar bowl of porcelain (mounted in silver-gilt) in the toilet service presented by Louis XV to his wife Marie Leczinska to celebrate the birth of their first son in 1729 (now in the Musée du Louvre).\nJean-Baptiste de Lens, the goldsmith whose mark appears on the lid and bowl, was the son of a  goldsmith and worked in Paris. He became a master goldsmith in 1712, when he took as his mark a crowned fleur-de-lys with his initials, 'J D L', a head and two pellets. He died in 1759.","physicalDescription":"Silver-gilt bowl with lid, decorated with cast and applied festoons of flowers and rocaille ornament, the lid finial cast as four cockleshells which support a rosette.","artistMakerPerson":[{"name":{"text":"Jean-Baptiste de Lens","id":"AUTH322757"},"association":{"text":"","id":""},"note":""}],"artistMakerOrganisations":[],"artistMakerPeople":[],"materials":[{"text":"silver","id":"AAT11029"}],"techniques":[],"materialsAndTechniques":"","categories":[{"text":"Metalwork","id":"THES48920"}],"styles":[{"text":"Rococo","id":"AAT21155"}],"collectionCode":{"text":"MET","id":"THES48599"},"images":["2014GX9293","2014GX9314","2014GX9309","2006AU4993","2011EW2121","2017JX4440","2018KY5598"],"imageResolution":"high","galleryLocations":[{"current":{"text":"3","id":"THES263060"},"free":"","case":"CA2","shelf":"","box":""},{"current":{"text":"3","id":"THES263060"},"free":"","case":"CA2","shelf":"","box":""}],"partTypes":[[{"text":"Bowl","id":"x47829"}],[{"text":"lid","id":"AAT45712"}]],"contentWarnings":[{"apprise":"","note":""},{"apprise":"","note":""},{"apprise":"","note":""}],"placesOfOrigin":[{"place":{"text":"Paris","id":"x29068"},"association":{"text":"","id":""},"note":""}],"productionDates":[{"date":{"text":"1732-3","earliest":"1732-01-01","latest":"1733-12-31"},"association":{"text":"","id":""},"note":""}],"associatedObjects":[{"object":{"text":"4271-1857","id":"O377087"},"association":""}],"creditLine":"","dimensions":[{"dimension":"Height","value":"14","unit":"cm","qualifier":"","date":{"text":"18/03/2011","earliest":"2011-03-18","latest":"2011-03-18"},"part":"Base of bowl to top of finial on lid","note":""},{"dimension":"Diameter","value":"11","unit":"cm","qualifier":"","date":{"text":"18/03/2011","earliest":"2011-03-18","latest":"2011-03-18"},"part":"Across the mouth of the bowl","note":""},{"dimension":"Diameter","value":"6.5","unit":"cm","qualifier":"","date":{"text":"18/03/2011","earliest":"2011-03-18","latest":"2011-03-18"},"part":"Across foot of the bowl","note":""},{"dimension":"Weight","value":"592.6","unit":"g","qualifier":"","date":{"text":"18/03/2011","earliest":"2011-03-18","latest":"2011-03-18"},"part":"Bowl and lid together","note":""}],"dimensionsNote":"","marksAndInscriptions":[],"objectHistory":"Nothing is known about the original or subsequent owners of this bowl. The South Kensington Museum purchased it for eleven pounds in Paris, but the vendor is not recorded. The original museum label dates the bowl 'about 1770'.","historicalContext":"","briefDescription":"Silver-gilt, France (Paris), 1732-3, mark of Jean-Baptiste de Lens.","bibliographicReferences":[{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"Lightbown, R. W. <u>French Silver</u>. London: HMSO, 1978. ISBN: 0112902502"},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"Sutton, Denys, ed. <u>France in the eighteenth century: Royal Academy of Arts, winter exhibition 1968</u>. Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, January 6-March 3, 1968 London: Royal Academy of Arts, 1968."},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"Brault, Solange and Yves Bottineau, <u>L'orfèvrerie française du XVIII<sup>e</sup> siècle</u>. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1959."},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"Musée du Louvre: nouvelles acquisitions du département des objets d'art, <u>La Revue des Arts</u>, March 1956, vol. 6. pp. 37-40."},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"<u>Recueil des Oeuvres de Gille-Marie Oppenord contenant deux mille motifs</u>. Paris: Édouard Rouveyre, 1888."},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"Snodin, Michael. English Rococo and its Continental Origins. <u>In</u>: Michael Snodin, ed. <u>Rococo: Art and Design in Hogarth's England</u>. Catalogue of the exhibition held at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 16 May - 30 September 1984. London: Trefoil Books, 1984, pp. 27-33. ISBN 086294046X"},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"Nocq, Henry. <u>Le poinçon de Paris. Répertoire des maîtres-orfèvres de la juridiction de Paris depuis le moyen-âge jusq'a la fin du XVIII<sup>e</sup> siècle</u>. 5 vols, Paris: H. Floury, 1926-31."},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"Mintz, Sidney W. <u>Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History</u>. New York: Penguin, 1986."}],"production":"","productionType":{"text":"","id":""},"contentDescription":"","contentPlaces":[],"associatedPlaces":[],"contentPerson":[],"associatedPerson":[],"contentOrganisations":[],"associatedOrganisations":[],"contentPeople":[],"associatedPeople":[],"contentEvents":[],"associatedEvents":[],"contentOthers":[],"contentConcepts":[],"contentLiteraryRefs":[],"galleryLabels":[{"text":"Teapot and sugar bowl\r\n1732–33\n\nSometimes earlier designs and models for luxury objects were updated with naturalistic decoration in the fashionable Rococo style. This teapot and bowl have the restrained forms of an earlier style, but have been modernised with delicately cast festoons of flowers and leaves. The lid of the bowl features cockle-shells.\n\nFrance (Paris)\r\nBy Jean-Baptiste de Lens\r\nGilded silver; stained bone handle\r\nMuseum nos. 4246:1&amp;2-1856; 4271-1857 ","date":{"text":"09/12/2015","earliest":"2015-12-09","latest":"2015-12-09"}},{"text":"SUGAR BASIN and COVER. Silver gilt, chased with foliage and rococo knob of shells and scroll-work. <i>French</i>. About 1770. H. 5½ in., diam. 4½ in. Bought, 11 <i>l.</i> 4246-'56.","date":{"text":"1856","earliest":"1856-01-01","latest":"1856-12-31"}}],"partNumbers":["4246:1-1856","4246:2-1856"],"accessionNumberNum":"4246","accessionNumberPrefix":"","accessionYear":1856,"otherNumbers":[],"copyNumber":"","aspects":["WHOLE","Bowl","Lid"],"assets":["2019LN8075","2019LV3641","2019LX0613","2019LW9817","2020MN9762"],"recordModificationDate":"2025-04-22","recordCreationDate":"2009-06-24","availableToBook":false}}