Saint-Cloud – Kakiemon Silver-Mounted Snuff Box in the Form of a Cat, ca 1740

A Saint-Cloud soft-paste porcelain snuff box in the form of a cat, produced circa 1740. The box is painted in a Kakiemon-style palette with flowering branches and insects derived from Japanese export porcelain produced in Arita during the late seventeenth century. The hinged silver mount is contemporary to the porcelain body.

Saint-Cloud was among the first European manufactories to produce soft-paste porcelain successfully. Established near Paris at the end of the seventeenth century, the factory developed frit-based porcelain in response to the European demand for Chinese and Japanese export wares. During the first half of the eighteenth century, Saint-Cloud produced objects influenced by East Asian porcelain, including pieces decorated in imitation of Japanese Kakiemon designs, known in France as porcelaine à la manière du Japon.

Animal-form snuff boxes belong to a small group of sculptural porcelain objects produced at Saint-Cloud during the second quarter of the eighteenth century. Comparable examples are held in museum collections, including a related cat-form snuff box in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Saint-Cloud Kakiemon wares in the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Musée national de Céramique.