SEVRES: Large lidded bowl on a porcelain pedestal, decorated with paste-on-paste motifs of garlands of flowers, baskets of flowers and nude women. Stamped S60 and decorated at Sèvres in 1876. Marked in relief: mel col 53 D and the initial A on a second line. Initial N. H: 35 – Diam: 24 cm Small firing crack, wear to the gilding. The ‘pâte-sur-pâte’ technique was created at the Sèvres Manufactory around 1848, by accident whilst attempting to reproduce the white relief floral decorations on a Chinese celadon vase held in the collections of the Sèvres Ceramics Museum. It is said that the curator, Riocreux, admired this vase so much that he asked a modeller at the manufactory, Fishback, to try to reproduce its effect. It was thought at the time that the white decoration had been applied over the celadon ground, which led to the ‘pâte-sur-pâte’ technique. We now know that the celadon colour was in fact applied all around the relief motifs. Marc-Louis-Emmanuel Solon, in an article devoted to ‘Pâte sur Pâte’ published in *The Studio* in January 1894, recounts: ‘The name “Pâte sur Pâte” (material on material) has always struck me as the most appropriate for this process, and I have adopted it, even though, at the Sèvres porcelain works, it was soon replaced by various other terms such as “pâte rapportée”, ‘applied paste’, which have been in use ever since.” Source: https://collection.mobilier-national.fr/encyclopedie/le-decor-en-pate-sur-pate