Plate 1720 - 1730

This faience plate was made by Pierre Chapelle II in eighteenth-century France. At the time, the French aristocracy’s embrace of Chinese porcelain had put pressure on local producers to imitate the coveted designs. Here, a European landscape fills the central space on the plate. The scene presents an imaginary village with a church. Framing the central image, the stylized birds, insects, and flowers recall East Asian decorative motifs. The institution of the French Royal Academy, with its hierarchy of genres, shaped the production and reception of art, and discouraged artists from ‘mere’ decoration. But the immense popularity of chinoiserie meant that it was a very lucrative field. To learn more, one might investigate the archives of the faience factories, as well as period pattern books. We must remember that the meaning of art is always contingent on social and institutional context.