This essay forms part of Silk, Known Again, a series from House of Anna Acciarini exploring silk, porcelain, pattern, ornament and cultural memory.
Oh My Darling Porcelaine !! began with an intense and direct experience of looking.
The scarf began with a desire to wrap oneself in wildly beautiful objects. A group of historical porcelain objects carried a visual force that felt almost impossible to resist. Their colours, bouquets, cartouches, gilded borders, vase silhouettes and rococo scrollwork formed an ornamental language of extraordinary richness. The artist looked for hours at these objects, arrested by their beauty.
This long silk scarf measures 180 × 65 cm. It belongs to the porcelain part of the Longevity line, and extends into the Vitality line. It was made in a single evening, as an act of design driven by “irresistible wanting.”
In this work, the decorative systems of porcelain are taken apart, enlarged, repositioned and translated into a compositional language suited to the movement of silk.
The porcelain cartouche becomes a compositional division within the scarf. The gilded border becomes a line that guides the eye. The vase silhouette becomes the central anchor at the base of the composition. The ground colour becomes the atmosphere of the whole. A group of historical objects is reorganised as a single contemporary silk work.
Sèvres Green: The Main Colour of the Scarf
The main colour of the scarf is Sèvres green, a bright apple-green tone.
This colour derives principally from a Sèvres fruit dish in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The dish gave the scarf an important cartouche system: white oval reserves placed at the top, bottom, left and right, each holding floral bouquets and framed by gold rococo scrollwork. It also provided the Sèvres green ground colour that defines the scarf, and the gilded leaves and scroll borders running between the cartouches.
In the scarf, these elements are no longer held on the oval surface of a fruit dish. They are rearranged into a long field of silk. A decorative structure once fixed to porcelain gains new direction, rhythm and relationship to the body.
Cartouches, Flowers and Gilded Borders
Several Sèvres and Vincennes porcelain objects helped form the internal structure of the scarf. Together, they provide reference points for spiralling cartouches, floral motifs, turquoise divisions and richly gilded ornament.
A cup with cover and saucer from The Metropolitan Museum of Art gave the scarf its swirling asymmetrical turquoise ground with gold blossom sprays, and its alternating white and turquoise areas with pendant floral garlands.
An elephant-head vase inspired the alternating white stripe panels on the lower body, the pendant flower garlands and the turquoise gilt bands. A Vincennes ewer and basin provided the compositional logic of a cartouche nested within a ground: a white cartouche at the centre of a turquoise field, with a floral bouquet framed by gold scrollwork.
These sources work as a decorative grammar. Ground, cartouche, bouquet, border, empty space and gilding form a visual system that can move from porcelain into silk.
The Vase Form at the Base of the Scarf
A vase with cover from The Metropolitan Museum of Art gave the scarf its turquoise ground and the central vase form at the base of the composition. Its architectural silhouette, with handles and cover, gives the scarf a stable visual anchor.
In a long scarf, this vase acts as the foundation of the composition. The viewer's eye begins at the base and moves upward through bouquets, cartouches, gilded borders and colour divisions.
From Cobalt Blue to Sèvres Green
In the early design of the scarf, both ends carried a cobalt blue marbled ground. This came from a large nineteenth-century Sèvres-style lidded vase from Patrick Moorhead Antiques, Brighton.
In the final design, the cobalt blue became Sèvres green. The colour changed; the logic of the marbled pattern remained. The design preserves the ornamental thinking of the original object and allows it to work within a silk composition.
This is a principle at the centre of the scarf's design: historical objects offer a language for translation. The design absorbs their proportions, rhythms, colour relationships and ornamental structures, then reorganises them according to the material nature of silk.
Gallery Objects and Contemporary Looking
In addition to open-access museum resources, the scarf draws on several gallery objects whose images are used with permission.
A Sèvres-style porcelain ormolu-mounted three-piece garniture from Mayfair Gallery, London, contributed the cobalt blue ground with its marbled texture, gold rococo scrollwork, an ormolu-like decorative language and the compositional logic of panelled narrative scenes.
A large nineteenth-century Sèvres-style lidded vase from Patrick Moorhead Antiques, Brighton, East Sussex, provided an important reference for the cobalt blue marbled ground in the early design, and helped form the logic of gold scrollwork against a deep-coloured ground.
A Louis XVI manner hand-painted and ormolu-mounted porcelain urn from Butchoff Antiques, London, contributed the turquoise ground, gilt-bronze head mounts, sculptural decorative lines and alternating bands of white and turquoise with fine gilded details.
The importance of these gallery objects lies in their visual contribution and in the world they represent. Historical decorative art lives in museums, and also within the moving network of antique dealers, collectors and specialist knowledge. Through looking, recording, permission and reinterpretation, these objects continue to enter new artistic contexts.
A Detail from the Naming Process
The scarf had an earlier title: Oh My Sèvres!!, a declaration of joy and surprise. During the creative process, Anna Acciarini wrote to the historic French manufactory whose name the early title echoed. The manufactory was generous with its images and good wishes, while asking that its registered name remain its own.
The work was therefore renamed Oh My Darling Porcelaine !!
This title carries the same affection, humour and longing as the original impulse. It shifts the focus away from a name and toward something more direct: the maker's own relationship with porcelain.
Additional Context: A Diplomatic Sèvres Vase
At either end of the scarf, the gilded leaf band draws on the decorative border around the upper section of the Londonderry Vase, also known as Vase (Vase étrusque à rouleau). In the scarf, this detail becomes a framing device, completing the composition at both ends.
As a background reference, Vase (Vase étrusque à rouleau) in the Art Institute of Chicago helps explain the artistic and diplomatic status of Sèvres porcelain in the early nineteenth century.
The work was made by the Manufacture nationale de Sèvres and is dated 1813. The model was designed by Charles Percier, the decoration by Alexandre-Théodore Brongniart, the flowers and ornament by Gilbert Drouet, and the birds by Christophe-Ferdinand Caron. It is made of enamelled and gilded hard-paste porcelain with gilded bronze, and measures 137.2 × 83.2 cm.
The design began around 1810 during the reign of Napoleon I, but was not completed and released from the manufactory until 1814, after Napoleon's defeat and the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy. King Louis XVIII later presented it to the British foreign secretary Viscount Castlereagh, 2nd Marquess of Londonderry.
This vase shows that Sèvres porcelain at the time was decorative art, diplomatic gift, ceremonial object and expression of power. Its presence frames the larger background that Oh My Darling Porcelaine !! addresses: how porcelain moves between art, politics, collecting and looking, and how it can be translated today into silk.
From Porcelain to Silk
Porcelain carries decoration through a firm, fixed body; silk carries images through softness, folding and movement. The surface of porcelain is still, while silk falls, turns and shifts. The decoration of porcelain follows the form of an object, while the decoration of a scarf changes with the body and the surrounding space.
For this reason, Oh My Darling Porcelaine !! is a work that reorganises decorative systems.
The cartouches are enlarged and repositioned. The floral bouquets are redistributed across the field. The ground colour is unified into a single register. The gilded borders become rhythm. The vase descends to the base and holds the composition. The visual languages of these historical objects are gathered into a single silk work that can move, be worn, be hung and be viewed.
This scarf is a passionate embrace of porcelain in silk.
Acknowledgements and Image Permissions
Anna Acciarini offers sincere thanks to the following museums, institutions and galleries. Their collections, images, public records and generous assistance provided important support for the making, research and presentation of Oh My Darling Porcelaine !!
Special thanks to The Metropolitan Museum of Art Open Access programme. The Met images listed in this article are Open Access images, CC0 Public Domain, sourced from metmuseum.org, and may be used for research, exhibition and creative interpretation.
Thanks to Mayfair Gallery, Patrick Moorhead Antiques and Butchoff Antiques for kindly granting permission for relevant images to be used in exhibition display, press and online material connected to this exhibition.
Thanks also to the Sèvres Porcelain Manufactory for courteous correspondence during the naming process. This exchange became part of the work’s story and led to the final title, Oh My Darling Porcelaine !!
Thanks to the Art Institute of Chicago for public collection information on Vase (Vase étrusque à rouleau), allowing this article to include wider context on the artistic, ceremonial and diplomatic importance of Sèvres porcelain in the early nineteenth century.
Gallery Object QR Codes
The following images are used by kind permission of the respective galleries for exhibition display, press and online material connected to this exhibition. Please scan the QR codes to view the relevant object pages.
Mayfair Gallery, London
Sèvres-style Porcelain Ormolu-mounted Three-piece Garniture
Image courtesy of Mayfair Gallery, London · mayfairgallery.com · Used with permission
QR code link:
https://www.mayfairgallery.com/sevres-style-porcelain-ormolu-mounted-three-piece-garniture
Patrick Moorhead Antiques, Brighton, East Sussex
Large 19th-Century Sèvres-style Porcelain Lidded Vase
Image courtesy of Patrick Moorhead Antiques, Brighton, East Sussex · patrickmoorhead.co.uk · Used with permission
QR code link:
https://www.patrickmoorhead.co.uk/object-details-page/854801/19330/large-19th-century-sevres-style-porcelain
Butchoff Antiques, London
A Hand-Painted and Ormolu-Mounted “Sèvres” Porcelain Urn in the Louis XVI Manner
Image courtesy of Butchoff Antiques, London · butchoff.com · Used with permission
QR code link:
https://www.butchoff.com/artworkdetail/848302/19860/a-sevres-porcelain-urn-in-the-louis
Museum Open Access Source Links
The following museum records are used for research, creative explanation and source documentation. The Metropolitan Museum of Art images are Open Access, CC0 Public Domain. The Art Institute of Chicago record is used as contextual background.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fruit Dish (compotier ovale)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Vase with Cover
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cup with Cover and Saucer
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Elephant-head Vase
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Ewer and Basin
Art Institute of Chicago, Vase (Vase étrusque à rouleau)