Vase Mansard,

1855

The porcelain painter Louis Robert, one of the first Frenchmen to pursue paper photography, was born into a family of artisans attached to the Sèvres Manufactory, on the outskirts of Paris. After paper-negative eff orts in portraiture and landscape, he switched to clearer, sharper glass negatives and issued a series of lush prints featuring Sèvres wares displayed at Paris's Exposition Universelle in 1855. With the factory's state subsidy under debate, Robert planned to sell prints at the exposition to broaden the factory's public profile. He subsequently established a photography studio in Sèvres with the aim of supplying photographs as teaching aids to students of industrial art and design. A state arts minister quashed that initiative, however, fearing that wide photographic distribution of Sèvres models would aid forgers and copyists and diminish the factory's reputation for exclusivity.