Plate (Assiette) (c. 1760–65): Art, History and Details

Plate (Assiette) (c. 1760–65) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Mennecy Factory (French).

The work and its context

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

As European porcelain production advanced, factories borrowed designs and techniques from one another in order to remain competitive in the porcelain market. Paintings of one to two figures perched on a rock or small hill overlooking a pastoral landscape were regularly reproduced on tea services fabricated at the Mennecy porcelain factory. These compositions were likely inspired by similar landscapes painted on porcelain at the Vincennes factory.

Object facts

• Title: Plate (Assiette)
• Date: c. 1760–65
• Creator attribution: Mennecy Factory (French)
• Culture: France, Mennecy, 18th century
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: soft-paste porcelain with enamel decoration
• Dimensions: Diameter: 24.3 cm (9 9/16 in.)
• Collection: Decorative Arts
• Department: Decorative Art and Design
• Accession number: 1954.5

A detail from the museum

The hatched border of this plate was likely produced by engine-turning, a process by which clay is turned on a rotating tool to produce fluted, geometric, and diced patterns.

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Darblay, Ayme. Villeroy: son passé, sa fabrique de porcelaine, son état actuel. Paris: Picard, 1901.
• Freǵnac, Claude. Les Porcelainiers du XVIIIe siècle franca̧is. Paris: Hachette, 1964.
• Dupont, Patrick. Porcelaines franc̦aises aux XVIIIe et XIXe siècles. Paris: Les Éditions de l'Illustration, 1987.

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.