012617-5/RL-1036

This is a French Limoges hard paste porcelain relish dish. The maker is Jean Pouyat. The date is circa 1891 to 1930.

The dish is oval, 10” long, 5 ½” wide and 1 ½’ high.

The bottom interior is a white glaze. The rest of the dish is a cobalt blue glaze. There is a gold overlay pattern of long stems with leaves.

The cobalt glaze shades to a lighter blue where the interior has ridges along the sides. This is not wear, but how the glaze came out of the kilns.

Gold trim is brushed on the edges. There is a thin line of gold around the oval white glaze. There are spots of gold wear on the edges and on the interior gold line.

Cobalt glaze is highly desired by buyers of Limoges because the cost of producing cobalt was expensive during this time period. It meant that this dinner ware was always of the highest quality and sold only to the wealthy, therefore it ages well.

Cobalt blue complements gold and white dinnerware and other types of cobalt dinnerware.

There are no chips, nicks, cracks or crazing.

The green underglaze maker’s mark is J.P. underscored by L. and followed by France. There is no decorating mark, however it is most likely that the maker produced the gold cobalt and decorated the piece simply because the porcelain maker had the kilns and technical skill to produce cobalt glaze porcelain.