PROVENANCE
  Sold Christie’s London, 28th October 1963, lot 131 ;
  with Winfried Williams, Eastbourne ;
  Private Collection, New England, sold Christie’s New York, 5th May 1999, lot 66.

CATALOGUE NOTE

This decoration is found on several Sèvres pieces, dated between 1766 and 1769, mostly signed by Méreaud Jeune.
This includes a 1766 écuelle et plateau in the Wallace Collection (Rosalind Savill, Catalogue of Sèvres porcelain, Vol. II, C430-1, pp.656-57), another écuelle in the Chappey collection (Fréderic Masson, "La Porcelaine de Sèvres, collection Chappey", Les Arts, 1905), a 1767 déjeuner lozange at the Hillwood Museum from the collection of Mrs Marjorie Merriweather Post (Liana Parredes Arend, Sèvres porcelain at Hillwood, 1998 pp. 72-73), another one dated 1768 is in the Musée du Louvre, a 1767 gobelet enfoncé in the Hermitage Museum (Nina Birioukova, Natalia Kazakevitch, La porcelaine de Sèvres du XVIIIème siècle, 2005, no. 1225, p.351) or a pot à l’eau et jatte at Clandon Park, Surrey (Cushion, Continental porcelain, 1982, p. 63, plate 50).
A plate dated 1766 is in the Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle and could be part of a dessert service bought on december 1766 by the marquis de Durfort, French Ambassador to Austria at the time. Six months later, he bought a single assiette à palmes described as frize colorée. It is likely a replacement for a plate of the 1766 service (David Peters, Sèvres Plates and Services of the 18th Century, 2005, Vol II, no. 66-5, pp. 371-72).

The piecework list for 1767 includes in the entry of work against Méreaud Jeune a number of pieces described as service Durfort sablé d’or which might refer to the gold-dotted ground (Archives MNS. F9, 1767)