Saint Cloud pair of glass coolers

Code: MB615

Circa 1725-30

Soft-paste porcelain

Height: 4 5/16 in. (11 cm.)

Length: 5 1/2 in. (14 cm.) 

The form of this pair of glass coolers was relatively typical of Saint-Cloud porcelain production and it derives from silver examples introduced at the end of the seventeenth century. Decorated in polychrome enamels, which the factory adopted in the 1720s, the chinoiserie design seen on the present glass coolers was almost always used in combination with this palette, as the colors of turquoise green, blue, purplish-brown, yellow, red and black recalled the colors of Chinese famille verte porcelains. The translucency of the pigments (visible especially in the turquoise blue seen in the robes of some of the figures and in elements of the landscape) lent itself nicely to Far Eastern motifs. While Chinese and Japanese art was certainly the inspiration for pieces like these, the painters at Saint-Cloud did not aim to copy directly from East Asian sources, but instead created scenes that evoked an imagined Far East.