AN UNUSUAL LATE 19TH CENTURY FRENCH SEVRES PORCELAIN TEACUP AND SAUCER painted with putti on an unusual silvered ground, under a gilt banding. 11 cm diameter. (2) Note: The factory, which had been founded in the town of Vincennes in 1740 and then reestablished in larger quarters at S?vres in 1756, became the preeminent porcelain manufacturer in Europe in the second half of the eighteenth century. Louis XV had been an early investor in the fledgling ceramic enterprise and became its sole owner in 1759. However, due to the upheavals of the French Revolution, its financial position at the beginning of the nineteenth century was extremely precarious. No longer a royal enterprise, the factory also had lost much of its clientele, and its funding reflected the ruinous state of the French economy.