Woman holding a Meissen porcelain salt shaker, 19th century

Chinese porcelain of an unprecedented whiteness fascinated Europe from its first contacts with the Far East through the silk routes. From 1710, potters in Meissen, Saxony, tried to imitate porcelain and developed a soft porcelain with which they created the first “human figure” sculptures with gallant subjects. This taste for ceramic sculpture from Germany spread and quickly, the great French factories caught up in St-Cloud, Chantilly and Sèvres. Cookie, unglazed porcelain with a powdery, milky appearance, made its appearance at the Royal Manufactory of Sèvres with the arrival of the painter Jean-Jacques Bachelier as “chief artist” (active at Sèvres from 1751 to 1793) and adorned the fashionable interiors of the aristocracy.