Cup and Saucer (Tasse et soucoupe) (c. 1775–95): Art, History and Details

Cup and Saucer (Tasse et soucoupe) (c. 1775–95) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Chantilly Porcelain Factory (French).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Early French porcelain factories produced ceramics called soft-paste porcelain. Without the addition of the ingredient kaolin, they could not produce the prized hard-paste porcelain of China and Japan. The Chantilly Porcelain Factory only produced hard-paste porcelain in the last decade of the 1700s. Applying the same techniques used on soft-paste to the new hard-paste formula was difficult, which may account for this object’s slightly grayish color and rough blue decoration.

Object facts

• Title: Cup and Saucer (Tasse et soucoupe)
• Date: c. 1775–95
• Creator attribution: Chantilly Porcelain Factory (French)
• Culture: France, Chantilly
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: hard-paste porcelain with underglaze blue decoration
• Collection: Decorative Arts
• Department: Decorative Art and Design
• Accession number: 1964.505

A detail from the museum

Early 18th-century porcelain attempted to emulate the blue and white design of Chinese ceramics, but the use of this design on a late 18th-century cup is unusual.

Collection credit

The Norweb Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• Dawson, Aileen. A Catalogue of French Porcelain in the British Museum. London: British Museum Press, 1994.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.