An ewer and a basin, estimated at between 50,000 and 100,000 euros, given by the queen to her housekeeper have just been recovered by the police. They will be returned to the owner of Thoiry Castle in the coming days.
«What emotion, but what emotion!” confides Paul de La Panouse to the newspaper The Parisian . The owner of the Château de Thoiry has just got his hands on a porcelain ewer and basin, given by Marie-Antoinette to her housekeeper, stolen 37 years ago by three thieves.
“With this theft, I had unwillingly become the faulty link in the family transmission chain”, declares the 80-year-old owner. Paul de La Panouse is a distant descendant of the Duchess of Tourzel, governess of the children of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette in 1789.
The precious crockery was returned to its former owner by the police. After the theft, the objects returned to the legal market. The buyer, who wishes to remain anonymous, took care to have them appraised, in order to find out if the ewer and the basin did not appear among a list of missing cultural objects. The objects were then entrusted to an auctioneer. The expert in charge of examining the porcelain contacted the central office for combating trafficking in cultural goods, which confirmed that they had been stolen.
In good faith, the owner agreed to return them to the Château de Thoiry, a real relief for Paul de La Panouse. An investigation is underway to try to trace the various sales over the last 37 years and perhaps catch the perpetrators. The value of the dishes would be estimated between 50,000 and 100,000 euros. That “around twenty porcelains on Earth have had the privilege of this blue », says Paul de La Panouse.