Eighteenth-century table settings were yet another space in interior life where wealth and power could be displayed. In royal court life, for the most formal occasions, silver and gold services would have been used. In upper class homes and perhaps in less formal settings within Versailles, Sèvres porcelain services like the above images would have adorned dinning tables. Sèvres porcelain held a prominent position within the station of luxury materials in eighteenth-century France whereby new inventions in color creation afforded consumers the choice of six beautiful colors to choose from for their tables. Each piece was individually thrown, fired, glazed, and painted making all wares unique. With six newly invented ground colors every consumer had the ability to curate their set; for example, Madame de Pompadour’s favorite color was rose pompadour and Catherine the Great of Russia preferred vert pomme.
Beyond the sets of porcelain, dinning tables in the eighteenth-century would have been covered with white damask table cloths like the ones exhibited in the animation above. According to Met curator Jeffrey Munger, porcelain flowers that are shown above would likely have not been included in the curation of table settings, but rather sugar sculptures of Grecian temples, figurines, and other genres would have been used as centerpieces. The point of Barnard Student, Avery Schroeder’s inclusion of eighteenth-century Vincenne porcelain flowers as centerpieces in the above photoshopped images was to include the infamous florals of Sèvres/Vincennes into this digital project. Finally, the cutlery included in the images are eighteenth-century silver which are accurate examples of the cutlery that was used in dinning practices throughout eighteenth-century France.
