Part of the 63-piece French faience service made by Faïencerie La Villa belonging to George Sand, which sold for €7000 (£5980) at Rouillac.
Image: Rouillac
The 19th century service, which was made from French faience in the Faïencerie La Villa, Bonnétable in Sarthe and decorated with baskets of flowers, comprised 63 pieces, mostly plates in various sizes, along with a salad bowl, vegetable tureens, two large platters for hors d’oeuvres and two square bowls.
Sand (1804-76), a hugely popular novelist in her day, went to live in the village of Nohant with her grandmother at the age of four.
On her grandmother’s death she inherited the 18th century house which was frequented by many famous artists and writers in her circle such as Eugène Delacroix, Honoré de Balzac, Gustave Flaubert, Théophile Gautier and the musician Frédéric Chopin, with whom she had a relationship.
Part of the 63-piece French faience service made by Faïencerie La Villa belonging to George Sand, which sold for €7000 (£5980) at Rouillac, shown a view of the auction house’s table setting with elements of the 19th century service.
Image: Rouillac
The service had come from Sand’s house at Nohant and was acquired in 1977 by a collector based in Tours from Christiane Sand, artist and successor to George Sand and curator of the George Sand Museum in nearby La Châtre.
Estimated at €1000-1500 in the Tours saleroom, it generated stiff competition on the day from collectors across France and further afield – including Poland – and was finally secured by a Parisian collector against a bidder from Luxembourg.
