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| Meissen porcelain factory Candlestick c. 1736 modeled by Johann Friedrich Eberlein Victoria & Albert Museum |
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| Meissen porcelain factory Candlestick c. 1736 modeled by Johann Friedrich Eberlein Victoria & Albert Museum |
To begin with, three sets of rococo candlesticks from the early days of the famous Meissen factory in Germany. Europeans had long worshiped objects in white-paste porcelain imported from China. No equivalent technology existed in Europe until the Meissen people managed to approximate the ancient and secret Chinese recipe. Meissen-ware became wildly popular in 18th-century England. That fact accounts for the very large collection now preserved at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, where the glazed face of each blossom asserts itself at an individualized angle.
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| Meissen porcelain factory Candlestick mid-18th century Victoria & Albert Museum |
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| Meissen porcelain factory Candlestick mid-18th century Victoria & Albert Museum |
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| Meissen porcelain factory Candlestick mid-18th century Victoria & Albert Museum |
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| Meissen porcelain factory Candlestick mid-18th century Victoria & Albert Museum |
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| Meissen porcelain factory Salt cellar c. 1765 modeled by Carl Cristoph Punct Victoria & Albert Museum |
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| Meissen porcelain factory Salt cellar c. 1765 modeled by Carl Cristoph Punct Victoria & Albert Museum |
Curators at the Victoria & Albert Museum explain that the purposes and uses of these porcelain figurines and figurine-groups would have varied from country to country. In Germany where they were created they served only a narrow and specific role at first. Such objects had been made of sugar paste and wax in earlier epochs. During the middle ages they appeared at banquets, usually during the dessert course, arranged as semi-edible table decorations. New, locally-made porcelain figures gradually came to replace such sugar-figures at formal German banquets. In England, by contrast, imported Meissen pieces were used from the beginning as free-standing objects of art, permanently displayed in special cabinets or arranged as bibelots on top of "domestic furnishing."
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| Meissen porcelain factory Flora & Cupid c. 1750-55 modeled by Johann Joachim Kändler Victoria & Albert Museum |
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| Meissen porcelain factory Venus & Cupid c. 1747 modeled by Peter Reinicke Victoria & Albert Museum |
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| Meissen porcelain factory Julius Caesar with the Horned Beast of Rome c. 1753 modeled by Johann Joachim Kändler Victoria & Albert Museum |
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| Meissen porcelain factory Hercules c. 1744 modeled by Johann Joachim Kändler Victoria & Albert Museum |
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| Meissen porcelain factory Children playing at dressing the Bride 1758 modeled by Johann Joachim Kändler Victoria & Albert Museum |
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| Meissen porcelain factory Harlequin & Columbine with their Baby c. 1740 modeled by Johann Joachim Kändler Victoria & Albert Museum |