The French Porcelain Society

Living Room Lecture

‘SÈVRES-MANIA’ IN 1830S PARIS: 2ND EARL OF LONSDALE, HENRY BROADWOOD & EDWARD HOLMES BALDOCK – Dr. Caroline McCaffrey-Howarth

Sunday, 20 September 2020, 18:00-19:00PM London, UK (BST)

We are delighted to welcome on our next lecture Dr. Caroline McCaffrey-Howarth, who will introduce us to the fascinating story of Sèvres-porcelain collector the 2nd Earl of Lonsdale and his network of British agents in post-Napoleonic Paris. We hope you can join us!

On Friday 27 November 1835, Henry Broadwood esq. wrote from London to the 2nd Earl of Lonsdale in Paris, saying that: ‘I will look round the town for what you want in the Sevres way and you may depend upon my not getting any but the very best’. It appears that Lonsdale had his eye set on a particular piece or set of Sèvres and he had turned to Broadwood to help him secure his desired acquisition. From 1836 onwards, Lonsdale was still in Paris, where he went ‘a china hunting’ almost daily with the antiques dealer Edward Holmes Baldock. Throughout the 1830s, Lonsdale continued to improve his connoisseurial eye and his knowledge of old Sèvres porcelain by visiting dealers, collectors, and the manufactory itself.

This talk speculates a collaborative collecting and learning process between the collector, Lonsdale, his close friend and sometimes agent, Broadwood, and the antiques and curiosity dealer, Baldock. Through Lonsdale, these figures interacted together, connected by a rising mania for collecting ‘old’ Sèvres porcelain in Paris in the 1830s. This research owes a great deal to the work of Dame Rosalind Savill, who re-discovered Lonsdale in her fascinating article for the French Porcelain Society Journal in 2007.

Please note that for security reasons we will lock the meeting at 18:20pm, so please make sure you have joined us by then.  If you are using Zoom software, Zoom have increased their security and you may be required to install an update.

For a Zoom link please email: fpsmailing@gmail.com

Image: Ice-cream cooler (Seaux ‘à glace’), Sèvres porcelain, 1778–9, The Wallace Collection, London