Saucer with a D and foliate scrolls c. 1800

This is a delicate porcelain saucer, likely made in the Faubourg St. Denis district of Paris. It's decorated with a simple “D” surrounded by foliate scrolls. Porcelain’s refined elegance belies a complex history, one intertwined with technology, trade, and labor. The techniques needed to create this ‘white gold’ were a closely guarded secret for centuries. Crafting it involved highly skilled ceramicists, mixing precise recipes of clay and minerals, firing at intense temperatures. The overglaze decoration, so understated here, would have demanded further firings and more expertise. The stylish gilt rim suggests it was made for an aristocratic client; a reflection of the consumer culture emerging at the time. Objects like this were not just functional; they were potent signifiers of status, emblems of a rarefied world. So while this saucer may seem humble at first glance, it embodies the hierarchies of skill, labor, and social class that characterized its time.