PETIT PORCELAIN

French hard-paste porcelain produced by Jacob Petit (b. 1796). Petit worked at the porcelain factory at Svres as a painter. With his brother Mardoche he bought a porcelain factory in Fontainebleau in 1830, finally settling in Paris in 1863. The wares he made were of a purely ornamental character; e.g., vases, statuettes, clocks. The high-quality porcelain may have been fired in Limoges. The usual colours are pale pink, light green, mauve, black, and gold. The shapes are idiosyncratic interpretations of the 18th-century rocaille style typical of the popular preference for the neo-Rococo during Louis-Philippe's reign (1830-48). Impressed or in blue, the mark for Petit porcelain is JP.