Some Duvivier decoration on Sceaux porcelain
When Fidelle Duvivier returned to France to work at Sceaux for the second time he was a young man in his early thirties. He had with him his English wife Elizabeth (née Thomas), who was soon to give birth to their second child, a girl, on February 20, 1775.(i) The child’s baptism was recorded in the registry of the Catholic church of Saint Jean-Baptiste, and is the only documentation we have of the family’s presence in Sceaux. Prior to their arrival, Duvivier had signed a four-year contract to work for William Duesbury of Derby beginning in late 1769, and he had done much putto (cherub) decoration with little winged allegorical amours on clouds in the popular French style of François Boucher. He was therefore well prepared to do similar decoration on Sceaux porcelain (2a, 2b) of the Glot period (1772 – c. 1794), as the examples here demonstrate.