Pair of Tureens

A pair of asparagus tureens and covers decorated in shades of green and pink and tied with brown ribbons.

The Chelsea factory seems to have delighted in creating all sorts of fruit and vegetable shapes to decorate the dining table. Although the most rococo pieces of contemporary silver similarly sought to imitate real vegetable forms, only in porcelain could the correct colours also be applied, and the factory produced everything from peapods to full-size chickens and boars’ heads. In the 1755 sale of Chelsea wares, for example, the catalogue lists ‘a compleat service for the desart’ including a ‘large cabbage leaf and bason, 2 vine leav’d dishes & four sunflower leaves’. Some of these were based on Meissen prototypes but Chelsea experimented widely with the forms used. These items were not necessarily created to serve related foodstuffs. It was another rococo conceit that many of the vegetable forms were in fact used during the dessert course and may have contained sweet dishes rather than savoury ones. Ices and other desserts were moulded to resemble vegetables in the same way. Indeed the capacity of these vessels was not large and the pieces may have only acted as decorations.

Text adapted from The First Georgians; Art and Monarchy 1714 - 1760, London, 2014.