A Catalogue of French Porcelain in the British Museum

In 1897 A. W. Franks bequeathed to the British Museum a fine group of French soft- and hard- paste porcelains. Since then, the collection has grown continuously through gifts, bequests and purchases, notably Sir Bernard Eckstein's bequest of eighteenth-century painted Sevres porcelains, and now numbers over 300 pieces. Recent acquisitions include both nineteenth-and twentieth-century pieces. The British Museum collection is published for the first time in this fully illustrated catalogue. It includes descriptions and discussions of many previously unpublished pieces, as well as histories of over thirty Parisian and provincial porcelain factories. These accounts are the first to appear in English for several decades and incorporate much new research from French sources, together with a full bibliography. Each piece is illustrated, with its marks.