Johann Joachim Kändler

Dressed in pointed shoes, jewels, and feathers, porcelain figures were designed to delight guests at the dinner table. They exemplify turquerie, a European style based on romanticized Turkish culture and aesthetics. In the 1700s, European nobles and members of royal courts attended Turkish-themed plays and operas, read Turkish tales, and lounged in Turkish robes and turbans.

Informing turquerie style was the portfolio Collection of 100 Prints Representing Different Nations of the Levant, which included engraved plates of Turkish royals and citizens. Published in Paris in 1714, those engravings followed a collection by Dutch artist Jean-Baptiste Van Mour, who traveled to Istanbul with the French ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. In the 1740s, the Meissen Porcelain Manufactory produced figures similar to images in the portfolio, and other manufactories soon followed.