PAIR OF VASES IN PORCELAIN VALENTINE, 19TH CENTURY

A pair of baluster vases in Valentine Saint-Gaudens porcelain, decorated with country-style attributes in medallions and gilded scrolls and arabesques. Each vase has two short, leafy handles. Numbered "4" under the base. 19th century. Circa: 1850

The Manufacture de Valentine is a porcelain factory founded in 1832, following the discovery of a kaolin vein in the central Pyrenees at Valentine, near Saint-Gaudens in Haute-Garonne. It was the only porcelain factory in southern France. At the dawn of the 19th century, former faience makers from Moustiers-Sainte-Marie, driven out by political troubles, set up a factory in Toulouse. By 1820, the Fouque et Arnoux earthenware factory on Place Saint-Sernin in Toulouse had seventy workers and an annex in La Valentine, near Saint-Gaudens, where the two factories were merged in 1832. These "Valentine porcelains", produced in Saint-Gaudens, are hard-paste, pure white, milky and very brightly glazed. The finest pieces are colored with cobalt blue and chromium green. Decorations are often enriched with floral bouquets and gold fillets painted on the enamel. After a heyday between 1840 and 1855, the company slowly declined, going bankrupt in 1878.

Condition report: slight wear to the gold. Crack to one of the vases.