Cup and Saucer (Tasse et soucoupe)

From the Cleveland Museum of Art record

Early French porcelain factories produced ceramics called soft-paste porcelain. Without the addition of the ingredient kaolin, they could not produce the prized hard-paste porcelain of China and Japan. The Chantilly Porcelain Factory only produced hard-paste porcelain in the last decade of the 1700s. Applying the same techniques used on soft-paste to the new hard-paste formula was difficult, which may account for this object’s slightly grayish color and rough blue decoration. Early 18th-century porcelain attempted to emulate the blue and white design of Chinese ceramics, but the use of this design on a late 18th-century cup is unusual.