Street vendor ca. 1750–60 Mennecy François Barbin (French, ca. 1689–1765) was forced to close his ceramic factory at Villeroy in 1748 due to the increasing political influence of the newly established Vincennes factory[1] that had received a royal privilege for the manufacture of porcelain three years earlier. In 1749, Barbin and his wife purchased a house in the nearby town of Mennecy, and in the following year they established a new porcelain factory “ditte de Villeroy établie au village de Mennecy.”[2] As the factories at both Villeroy and Mennecy were run by the Barbin family, the two ente

Street vendor ca. 1750–60 Mennecy François Barbin (French, ca. 1689–1765) was forced to close his ceramic factory at Villeroy in 1748 due to the increasing political influence of the newly established Vincennes factory[1] that had received a royal privilege for the manufacture of porcelain three years earlier. In 1749, Barbin and his wife purchased a house in the nearby town of Mennecy, and in the following year they established a new porcelain factory “ditte de Villeroy établie au village de Mennecy.”[2] As the factories at both Villeroy and Mennecy were run by the Barbin family, the two enterprises have traditionally been treated as a single entity, and it is sometimes difficult to distinguish the products of the earlier factory from that of the successor operation at Mennecy. Both factories used the same mark consisting of the letters DV, since they were under the protection of the duc de Villeroy. Genevieve Le Duc has argued persuasively that the mark generally appears in painted format on Villeroy’s production but incised on pieces from Mennecy, although exceptions to this practice exist.[3]The soft-paste porcelain body developed at Mennecy was generally whiter and more refined than the one used at Villeroy,[4] and the tin glaze used to enhance the whiteness of most Villeroy porcelain was discontinued at the new factory. The scale of operation at Mennecy was considerably larger than at Villeroy, with the total number of workers employed at the factory in excess of one hundred and twenty.[5] In addition, much of Mennecy’s factory production was both more ambitious and more technically accomplished than Villeroy’s, but nevertheless, its output remained modest in terms of form, scale, and decoration. The factory concentrated on making small objects, including snuffboxes, small covered pots for meat juices, pots for cosmetic ointments, cane handles, tea wares, and some smaller dining , Mennecy produced a relatively wide range of figures

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