Horse, Riders & Dogs Scene Cup & Saucer

This is a really nice cup and saucer made by one of the better Paris makers (possibly Dagoty ) during the Empire period of the early 19th century. It is one of the nicer examples I have seen of this style and is very decorative and elegant. The cup is superbly decorated with a good quality hand painted scene to the front of cup including tow horses and their riders as well as some dogs in a landscape surrounding. The rest of the cup as well as the saucer have a really fancy tooled gilding to it as shown. Nice handle shape and my favorite part is the three claw feet the cup sits on as that always elevated the cup a bit and looks even nicer. The scene has writing under it but it is hard to make out. Something like Les Chiens en defaut I think it says which means The dogs are misbehaving or something along those lines. This set displays superbly with a couple of tiny chips to the bottom edge of two of the feet and a larger gilded over one to the thrid. The saucer has a star crack in the center as shown. Still an amazing example! The two pieces are unmarked except an incised script letter to the underside of the cup which is common to Paris area makers of this period but they are definitely from this region and this period. The cup is 3.625 inches tall (plus an inch on top of that for the handle) and 3.5 inches in diameter. The saucer is 1.125 inches tall and 6.625 inches in diameter. So a rather large set! Please email me for more information or other pictures.