Glass cooler (seau à verre) ca. 1725–30 Saint-Cloud factory It is believed that the Saint-Cloud factory began using enamel colors in the 1720s, and the palette of five colors developed at the factory at this time allowed for a different style of decoration than what had been employed for porcelains painted solely with cobalt blue. For those pieces to be decorated with colored enamels, the painters at Saint-Cloud almost always took their inspiration from Chinese and Japanese art. They sometimes borrowed motifs directly from imported porcelains and lacquer work, but more frequently painters devi

Glass cooler (seau à verre) ca. 1725–30 Saint-Cloud factory It is believed that the Saint-Cloud factory began using enamel colors in the 1720s, and the palette of five colors developed at the factory at this time allowed for a different style of decoration than what had been employed for porcelains painted solely with cobalt blue. For those pieces to be decorated with colored enamels, the painters at Saint-Cloud almost always took their inspiration from Chinese and Japanese art. They sometimes borrowed motifs directly from imported porcelains and lacquer work, but more frequently painters devised images and patterns intended to evoke Far Eastern culture, or combined borrowed motifs in a distinctly European manner. It is probable that the factory painters had access to Chinese and Japanese porcelains either through the collection of Philippe II (1674–1723), duc d’Orléans, who granted protection to the factory in 1702, or through the owners of the factory who sold imported porcelains in their capacity as marchands faienciers, or dealers in ceramics. Despite the availability of these works, there was little attempt to faithfully copy either Chinese or Japanese models. Motifs from imported porcelains were sometimes combined on the same object, and there was little consistent adherence to the color scheme of the source of the original motif. Most notably, imagery inspired by these models, or intended to suggest an imagined Far East, was employed by the factory on European forms almost exclusively. The factory’s production focused on functional objects, most of which were intended for use on the dining table, as part of a toilet service, or for the consumption of tea, and it is on these objects that Chinese or Japanese imagery is commonly found rather than on decorative vases derived from Far Eastern glass cooler is decorated with unusually ambitious Far Eastern–inspired compositions of figures standing around a table and a landscape consisting of p

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