In 1758 an event happened of the first importance to the making of a true French natural porcelain. This was the discovery by the Count de Brancas Lauraguais of an inferior quality of kaolin near Alençon. The specimens of the ware in which it was used show a coarse body, and decoration after the Chinese and Japanese types. Shortly afterward Gérault, or to give his name in full, Charles Claude Gérault Daranbert, the proprietor of a faience establishment at Orleans, engaged in the manufacture of porcelain. A privilege had been granted to the Orleans workshop, in 1755, to make a white faience, and the making of porcelain appears to have begun about 1764, on the acquisition by Gérault of a kaolin mine at St. Yrieix-la-Perche. In 1765 Guettard, chemist in the establishment of the Duke of Orleans at Bagnolet, came upon the kaolin deposit at Alençon originally discovered by the Count Lauraguais. Within a few years, also, Robert was making porcelain at Marseilles. [Illustration: Fig. 266.--Old Sèvres, Mounted in Metal. Dark-blue Ground. Height, 9½ in. (Mrs. J. V. L. Pruyn Coll.)] The next events of importance are Madame Darnet’s discovery of kaolin at St. Yrieix, and Macquer’s experiments with it at Sèvres. As at Strasburg, the mistake was made at Sèvres of mixing the kaolin and petuntse in the wrong proportions, and the result of the excess of felspar was a very translucent glassy body. The first pieces and those of artificial paste were so nearly alike that, to distinguish the former, they were marked with the well known double L and crown. They may also be known by the color being laid upon the glaze. In the soft paste the colors appear to be sunk in the glaze. When Brongniart, in 1804, stopped the production of _pate tendre_, the works of the royal factory began to assume the forms and to be decorated in the styles with which the world has been familiar for the last seventy years. “The largest pieces,” says Jacquemart, “were undertaken, and sculpture and painting united to enrich gigantic vases. Plaques of forty-six by thirty-six inches were given to distinguished artists, who reproduced in unalterable colors the frescoes of Raffaelle, the masterpieces of Vandyke, Titian, and of the modern school.” Of modern Sèvres we give one example (Fig. 268), to which some interest attaches as belonging to a service presented by the French Government to Miss M. F. Curtis, distributor of funds sent from Boston for the relief of sufferers by the war with Germany in 1870-1871. [Illustration: Fig. 267.--Franklin Vase. Sèvres. Blue and Gold. Inscription on Vase, “Vue de la Maison de Franklin à Passy.” (White House.)] [Illustration: Fig. 268.--Sèvres Porcelain Tea-Set. (Curtis Coll., Boston Museum of Fine Arts.)]