The first Chinese porcelains to reach Europe had Chinese shapes or followed forms developed for Asian export markets. By about 1700 the European East India companies were ordering large quantities of Chinese porcelain made to European design specifications, some of which reproduced or adapted European prototypes. These included a range of table wares copying European ceramics, such as the dinner plates, dessert baskets and punchbowls shown nearby, but also more sculptural pieces made to decorate the dinner table. Among these were the serving vessels illusionistically modelled and painted as animals that were so popular in mid-eighteenth century Europe, and the porcelain figures used to accompany the service of the dessert course during grand meals.

The painted patterns on European ceramics were likewise reproduced and adapted by Chinese potters. Some of those copied in this way were themselves originally partly of Chinese inspiration, as with Meissen’s Chinese subjects of the 1720s, though the end result is entirely Western in style. Others were in fashionable styles of wholly European derivation, as with the copies of the Derby porcelain factory’s distinctive striped Neoclassical decorative wares.