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For my dissertation topic I should propose a monograph on Jean-Claude Duplessis (d.1774) the French goldsmith and sculptor who was Italian by birth and who worked in gold, porcelain, bronze and hardstone. 

This monograph should establish Duplessis as one of the most important and prolific artists of eighteenth century France, a fact of which I am certain because of the results of preliminary work I have done in New York and in Paris. Hardly anything is known about Duplessis' early life and his Italian background has never been investigated. The artistic crosscurrents between France and Italy during the Baroque and Rococo periods must have left their mark on his development, if only because he was a native of Piedmont, the locale of much interaction between the north and the south. In France Duplessis was an innovator of the first rank in the development of designs for the manufacture of porcelain, a new industry in Europe in the eighteenth century. His work for the Royal Porcelain Manufactory at Sèvres had wide influence on contemporary ceramic design. During the Rococo and early Neo-Classical periods, Duplessis also was one of the principal sculptors of decorative bronzes. These works of art were often separate entities in themselves, or when in the form of mounts, contributed enormously to the design of furniture and sometimes to the virtual re-design of such objects as oriental lacquers and porcelains, the uses of which were in many cases altered after they had been embellished with European gilt-bronze. Most important, decorative bronzes did much to give eighteenth century French interiors their distinctive appearance and they continue to affect the appearance