Actress (one of a pair) ca. 1730–40 Saint-Cloud factory The production of the Saint-Cloud factory was focused primarily on utilitarian wares, although vases were made as well, especially in the first decades of the factory’s history (see and , b). Most of the factory’s production was small in scale, and items such as pomade pots, snuffboxes, knife handles, potpourris, and cups and saucers appear to have constituted a sizable percentage of the factory’s output. It would seem that porcelain sculpture tested the technical and artistic limits of the factory’s capabilities,

Actress (one of a pair) ca. 1730–40 Saint-Cloud factory The production of the Saint-Cloud factory was focused primarily on utilitarian wares, although vases were made as well, especially in the first decades of the factory’s history (see and , b). Most of the factory’s production was small in scale, and items such as pomade pots, snuffboxes, knife handles, potpourris, and cups and saucers appear to have constituted a sizable percentage of the factory’s output. It would seem that porcelain sculpture tested the technical and artistic limits of the factory’s capabilities, and relatively little sculptural work was produced during the seven or eight decades of the factory’s two figures are among the most ambitious of the sculptures made at Saint-Cloud. While most Saint-Cloud figures are characterized by a certain static quality and an absence of finely modeled detail, these two figures convey a degree of expressiveness and a sense of movement, and their modeling is of greater complexity than is commonly found in Saint-Cloud sculpture. Both figures are distinguished by their gesturing arms, and they occupy a three-dimensional space more fully than most figures made at the is probable that the two figures represent actors dressed as Chinese characters,[1] and thus the prominence of the figures’ gestures can be explained by their identity as theatrical subjects. The reading of the figures as being Chinese, however, is due primarily to the hat of the male figure and the bold patterning of the robes worn by both figures. His broad-brimmed, tall hat ending in a point is a variant on the type of hat that Europeans traditionally identified with male figures from the Far East, and his identity as a Chinese figure is enhanced by the prominent mustache and goatee that were often regarded in Europe as traditional attributes of both Chinese and Japanese men. The headdress worn by the female figure, however, is not one com

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