Charger

This charger is decorated with sprays and sprigs of stylized oriental flowers and leaves painted with a blue pigment (cobalt oxide) before the application of a translucent glaze. The technique had been widely used in Chinese porcelain since the fourteenth century and was important for European porcelain manufactories to master as they sought to produce convincing imitations of East Asian porcelain. Underglaze blue, developed at Du Paquier about 1720, was one of the manufactory’s first modes of decoration and was used throughout its history.