Cindy Sherman's Madame Pompadour Limoges Porcelain

In 1990, photographer/model/ artist Cindy Sherman created this Limoges porcelain 21 piece tea service in a limited edition after the original design commissioned by the MADAME DE POMPADOUR (nee Poisson) in 1756 at the Manufacture Royale de Sevres.




Sherman's image of herself as Madame de Pompadour was transferred onto porcelain through a complex process which requires up to 16 photo-silkscreens. Each tureen and platter is silkscreened and painted at Ancienne Manufacture Royale, fired on four different occasions, and then individually signed and numbered.







The edition, which was published by ARTES MAGNUS, is still available for purchase at various sites (see the end of this post) in the traditional 18th century colors of apple green, rose, royal blue or yellow and is limited to 75 in each color version.

Part of the present Rococo exhibit at the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum the tureens and platters are also part of permanent collections at museums such as the MAD museum, the Saint Louis Art Museum, The Tate museum in Liverpool, the Schein Joseph Museum of Ceramic Art. The Queensland Art Gallery of Modern Art and others.


Above: Madame de Pompadour (née Poisson), 1990
30-piece porcelain dinner service, including six each of presentation plates, dinner plates, salad plates, rimmed soup bowls and dessert plates
Dimensions vary
Edition of 75 in each of four available color options
$7,000
Available for purchase at Artware Editions here.
Or at Artes Magnus here.

A bit about Cindy Sherman:


above: Photograph of Cindy Sherman, by Mark Seliger, courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures Gallery, New York, NY, USA

Artist's Biography:
Cindy Sherman was born in Glen Ridge, New Jersey in 1954 and graduated from State University of New York at Buffalo in 1976. In the late 1970s, Sherman began a series of black and white photographs, which she named Untitled Film Stills, (1977 to 1980), and were first exhibited at the Contemporary Art Museum in Houston, Texas in 1980. The series cemented her position in post-modern photography and since then Sherman has continually worked to challenge the boundaries of the medium. In almost all of her works, Sherman acts as model, photographer, and director, and alters her appearance beyond recognition through makeup, prosthetics and costumes.

Although she began her career using black and white photography, Sherman transitioned to color film in the early 1980s. Her use of costume and makeup challenged the way in which portraiture was considered. She further challenged conventional means of viewing the human form in 1992 with her Sex Pictures series, which involved life-sized prosthetics as models in contorted and gender-crossing positions. In her recent work, Sherman has reintroduced herself as the model. From fairytales and history portraits to horror films and the nostalgia of the 1950s and 1960s films, Sherman consistently examines a woman's role in society and questions the ways in which the viewer looks at and identifies with the woman portrayed.

Her work has been shown throughout the United States and Europe, and Metro Pictures in New York has shown her work since 1980. In 1997, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, California held a retrospective of her work, Cindy Sherman: Retrospective, and in 1999, Sherman was the recipient of the Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography, which recognized her influence on photography from the late 1970s onward. She lives and works in New York.

the unofficial Cindy Sherman site.