Wholesale Three Haviland Limoges Porcelain Plates with Embossed Scrolled Rims and Gilt Tracery, Haviland & Co, France, c. 1894–1931

The Piece Three plates in white Limoges porcelain, thin enough to carry light through the rim and heavy enough in the hand to feel like the real thing. The rim is where the work is. It runs in a gentle scalloped wave, and moulded into it is a low relief of ribbons and scrollwork — raised, not printed, so it catches shadow before it catches colour. Over that moulding a decorator laid a fine gold line, following the raised scrolls where they rise and dropping to a clean band at the very edge. The gold is applied over the glaze and worked by hand; the line varies in weight the way a brush varies. Two of the three carry a raised beaded ring circling the well, so the centre of the plate is defined by a fine pearled border. The third has the same scalloped rim, the same moulded scrollwork, and the same gold tracery, but a plain unbeaded centre. It is a different blank, decorated to match — which is worth saying plainly rather than letting a buyer discover it on the table. History & Provenance The reverse carries two marks, and it is the pair of them together that dates the porcelain. First, printed in green beneath the glaze: Haviland over France. That is the factory mark, applied at the works in Limoges before the piece was glazed and fired. Beneath it, printed in red over the glaze: Haviland & Co over Limoges. That is the decorating mark, applied after the gold went on. Two marks means two stages and two firings, and the combination of this green factory mark with this red decorating mark is the one Haviland used across roughly 1894 to 1931. The Haviland story is an American one told in French porcelain. David Haviland was a New York china importer who could not find French makers willing to produce the shapes and weights the American table wanted, so in 1842 he moved to Limoges and built the works himself — a company producing French porcelain to American specification, and for decades the dominant name on formal tables in the United States. This is the everyday face of that business: not the hand-painted floral service, but the white-and-gold plate a household actually set. One honest note on age. The mark range runs from 1894 to 1931, so the earliest possible date puts these comfortably past a century and the latest falls just short of it. We are not going to narrow that range further than the marks support in order to call all three antique. Product Details Field Detail Object Three porcelain plates Maker Haviland & Co, Limoges, France Form Scalloped rim with moulded ribbon-and-scroll relief.