Toilet box containing four smaller boxes

Chelsea Porcelain Manufactory

ca. 1761 · Soft-paste porcelain, Mazarin blue ground with gold decoration · European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

Containing a nest of smaller boxes, these pieces may have belonged to a luxurious dressing-table set similar to one advertised by the dealer Burnsall on July 21, 1764: "A most grand and capital Lot of . . . Chelsea Porcelain, containing a dressing Glass and three Drawers . . . with different Gold Instruments and Twelve Toilet Boxes to ditto, all of the rich Mazarine Blue and Gold." The deep blue ground color, known as Mazarine blue, combined with the lavish gold decoration, used at Chelsea as early as 1756, clearly was influenced by Vincennes and Sèvres porcelain.

Artist

Chelsea Porcelain Manufactory

Date

ca. 1761

Medium

Soft-paste porcelain, Mazarin blue ground with gold decoration

Culture

British, Chelsea

Department

European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

Credit line

Gift of Irwin Untermyer, 1964