A large silver platter from a service made for the Duc d'Orléans
Scalloped oval tray with handles on either side. The long sides of the broad lip each applied with the coat-of-arms of Louis-Philippe d'Orléans beneath a ducal crown. The moulded cast silver rim with raised and finely chased acanthus decoration. L 71.5; W 48.3 cm, weight 5,055 g.
Paris, marks of Jean-Baptiste-Claude Odiot, 1819 - 38.
Louis-Philippe inherited an extensive dinner service from his mother Louise-Marie-Adelaide de Bourbon. After the Revolution, he arranged for it to be supplemented with pieces made by Jean-Baptiste-Claude Odiot and emblazoned with his coat-of-arms. This platter, which still displays all the qualities that characterise the taste of the Ancient Régime, appears to be one of these subsequent additions. It may have been made to go under one of the famous cloches from the earlier service. Designed by Antoine-Sébastien Durand in 1754, the finials of the cloches were formed as large sculptural fish still lifes (one of the pieces is housed in the Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon, inv. no. 2381). The cloches bear the identical relief coat-of-arms of the later citizen-king.
Literature
A cloche by Durand illus. in Frégnac, Les Grand Orfèvres de Louis XIII à Charles X, Lausanne 1965, p. 154 f.