France, Villeroy, 18th century / c. 1740
Pair of Bottle Coolers (seaux à rafraîchir)
The Cleveland Museum of Art catalogs Pair of Bottle Coolers (seaux à rafraîchir) as ceramic (France, Villeroy, 18th century · c. 1740).
The four figures on horseback are derived from prints French designer Jean Antoine Fraisse modeled after textiles, lacquers, and porcelains found in the collection of Louis-Henri, duke of Bourbon.
A CLOSER LOOK
The museum identifies this ceramic as Tin-glazed soft-paste porcelain with enamel decoration and credits Villeroy Factory.
The museum's collection notes: These bottle coolers combine a traditionally European form based on silver models with designs and compositions that emulate Chinese and Japanese porcelain. Towering over the figures the luxuriant, vividly colored vegetation is characteristic of chinoiserie, imitations of East Asian decoration and design common in 18th-century European decorative arts. Distorted by the European imagination, these imitations were not accurate representations of the cultures from which they drew inspiration.
FOLLOW THE EVIDENCE
The Cleveland Museum of ArtPair of Bottle Coolers (seaux à rafraîchir)Original explanation based on the sources above. Images carry their own reuse terms.