Assiette à dessert, service "Kioto"

It would be difficult to find a better illustration of the great success of Japonism in the 1870s than the multiplicity of applications in that most typically bourgeois medium of the time: porcelain and faience tableware. Already, in 1866, Félix Bracquemond had created a printed ceramic service for the dealer and producer Eugène Rousseau, full of floral and animal motifs drawn mainly from the works of Hokusaï and Hiroshige. In this way, Bracquemond was certainly one of the first to introduce Japanese style into the industrial arts in France.
The popular passion for all things Japanese was still strong up to the beginning of the 1880s. The Kyoto service, produced at the Creil and Montereau manufactory, still offers delectable designs of typically Japanese scenes and motifs. Here in the centre, we see a man and two women dressed in traditional costume with a landscape in the background resembling Mount Fuji. On the left is a bird drawn in the style of monochrome, Chinese ink prints, and below, a blend of decorative motifs and plant designs. Each element is shown in overlapping compartments typical of the "Japanese style". Finally, the illusion of a square, Far Eastern plate placed on a contoured Western plate is an illusionist reference to the way European manufacturers were directly inspired by Far Eastern arts.