By old Sèvres we comprehend the pieces made from 1753 to 1804. This is the true _vieux Sèvres_. From 1753 to 1777 inclusive the letters of the alphabet, singly, from A to Z, (W omitted), indicate the years of manufacture. The year letters were placed between the two script L’s (one reversed). The letters A, B, and C indicate the pieces made at Vincennes (the original site of the manufactory) in 1753, 1754, and 1755 respectively, while the year of the removal of the manufactory to Sèvres, near St. Cloud, 1756, is indicated by the letter D between the double L’s. The L’s, of course, stood for the royal cipher of Louis XV, the first year, and then of Louis XVI of France from 1754 to September, 1792, when the French Republic was proclaimed and R.F. in monogram or in capital letters took its place. In the study of any porcelain pieces the _amateur_ should acquaint himself with the difference between soft and hard porcelain of any sort. The eighteenth-century porcelain has a soft, velvety “feel,” the glaze not being so glassy as that of hard porcelain. A pen-knife can cause abrasion on soft-paste porcelain, while hard paste will nearly always repel even the pressure of a steel point drawn over it. With soft paste one can see through the glaze, as it were; with hard paste one cannot. The enamel of the soft paste of Sèvres presents a delicate, milky glaze, exquisitely distinctive. The colors, too, show forth with velvety freshness. _Bleu du roi_--king’s blue--is the name given the cobalt blue of the decoration; _turquoise_ designates the sky-blue which dates from 1752, when Helbot first compounded it; _rose Pompadour_ and _rose Dubarry_ are the names given the reds during the domination of those court favorites; _violet pensée_, the name for the pansy color; _jaune clair_, the name for the pale yellow (_jonquille_ was as often used); _vert pomme_ and _vert jaune_ designated the apple-green, while _vert anglais_ and _vert pré_ was applied to the color we term grass-green. There is also a velvety “feel” about the unenameled portions of porcelain, owing to its fine texture, which distinguishes it from hard porcelain. Looked at obliquely against the light so that a portion of the white surface and a portion of the painted surface equally receive a beam, there appear no differences in surfaces. With a soft porcelain the enamel seems so to incorporate with the soft paste as to present a surface of identical substance. Hard porcelain will exhibit a distinct difference in the lustre of the white surface and in the colored glazed surface. The color surface will invariably appear less brilliant.