Footed Dish (soucoupe à pied)

These dishes may have supported cups of sweet ices or pyramidal displays of fruits or sweetmeats as part of a dessert or tea service. On the reverse of the plate the two birds pictured are identified as a Petit Perruche, du Pérou (budgerigar from Peru) and Harle huppé, Mâle (male red-breasted merganser.) Their images were modeled after engravings in naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc’s Natural History of Birds, a book which regularly inspired Sèvres porcelain paintings in the 1780s and 90s.