Figurative ashlar with chinoiseries

For european society, porcelain came to represent a symbol of cultural sophistication and luxury, leading faience to start using the palette of colours commonly found in Oriental work. The exclusive use of blue on tiles from the first half of the eighteenth century was in homage to chinese porcelain, just as some later manganese pieces would repeat a taste for pieces produced at the Sèvres factory, which painted its central scenes in a brownish violet colour called puce. This is a potential explanation for the origin of the sophisticated use of manganese throughout the central compositions of same tile panels. In this example, the exoticism is heightened by the iconography of na imagined daily scene in China, as recorded by a western engraver.