I, like my peer Megan Baker, have decided to further the work I began in Professor Anne Higonnet’s Spring 2015 course A Virtual Enlightenment and turn it into my senior thesis at Barnard College. My work for Professor Higonnet’s seminar dealt with French eighteenth-century materials and their makers whereby my individual research focused on the invention of new colors in the medium of porcelain, specifically Sèvres Porcelain. Throughout the seminar, I worked to create a website that showcased said materials and the makers with three other peers in the course [Materials & Their Makers]. Following the close of the spring semester, I had a strong desire to further my knowledge of Sèvres porcelain and I was able to stay on the project as a summer intern. For seven weeks of the summer, I worked with Professor Higonnet and four other students to further the website development and content.

I knew as early as mid-spring-semester that I wanted my thesis to focus on Sèvres porcelain and the invention of color in some capacity. My love of the subject did not wane over the summer as I continued to research.  Now, I sit here in the third week of my senior year never more pleased to announce that my senior thesis will deal with the history of Sèvres porcelain in the eighteenth-century as well as how this new luxury object was consumed and utilized throughout Europe. While it may seem that the amount of time I’ve spent studying Sèvres would lead some to believe that I had enough content to begin writing a thesis, I definitely have many more hours to spend reading before my chapters start forming. I am currently reading Liana Paredes’ Sèvres Then and Now and have just finished reading Joanna Gwilt’s French Porcelain for English Palaces: Sèvres from the Royal Collection. As of right now, I am bolstering my background of the Sèvres porcelain manufacturing processes, leading figures in the manufactory’s early years, and the artisans who helped develop France’s most luxurious good.

I hope to open with a bit of the manufactory’s history, then merge into discussing the head chemist, Jean Hellot who was responsible for the innovative color palette of the eighteenth century, then deal with the role played by Madame de Pompadour, and finally look into and annotate how Sèvres porcelain was consumed and used within the eighteenth-century interior. Corresponding, in construction, to the Virtual Enlightenment course, my thesis is going to have a digital component to accompany the textual piece; my hope for the digital project is to recreate the human experience of utilizing a teacup and saucer in the form of animation or photographic stills (© Avery Schroeder 2015).

Visit to see the most recent digital work I’ve completed: https://bt.barnard.edu/ave2015/project3/2015/04/08/a-table/