By the middle of the eighteenth century developments in porcelain moved from Germany to France, as a royal porcelain factory was set up at Vincennes and (later) Sèvres. This made not hard-paste but artificial or ‘soft-paste’ porcelain, which had a thick glaze which tended to obscure details of the modelling. Sèvres turn this to their advantage by producing a range of unglazed ‘biscuit’ figures which were specifically intended for table decoration. They were first made in 1751. The first models were done after drawings by the court artist Francois Boucher (1703-70), who provided thirteen drawings of children, only one of which, ’Le Petit Jardinier’, survives in the factory’s archives today. The designs were translated into three-dimensions by the sculptural team at the factory in 1753-55, Pierre Blondeau, Louis Félix De La Rue, Jean Baptiste de Fernex and Claude-Louis Suzanne. Some were even modelled by the great sculptor Etienne-Maurice Falconet (1716-91), who was head of the factory’s sculpture workshop from 1757 to 1766. They well captured the erotic nature of Boucher’s designs, as well as advertising the sculptural possibilities of biscuit porcelain. Their fragility was judged such that prints after some were engraved and advertised in L’Avant-Coureur in 1761 and 1763, in order to record their appearance. The number of models after Boucher rose eventually to over seventy; a number were bought by L’Office du Roi, the King’s pantry or confectionery, in December, 1767, and again in December, 1769, presumably for use as decoration for the dessert table. As late as 1792, the Prince of Wales (later George IV) in London had four Sèvres dessert services and about forty biscuit figures in the ’Confectionary’ at his London palace at Carlton House.


By this period, a horticultural theme had become the favoured motif for a grand dessert. Well-appointed tables were laid in imitation of formal gardens or parks, complete with flower-beds of coloured sugar, gravel walks made from dragées (sugared aniseeds), trees of candy and sugar paste figures. The surtout de table, originally used for holding condiments and dragées, evolved into a full-length plateau of looking glass, on which these decorations were arranged. Between 1740 and 1789 an international craze for this kind of setting, popularised by the Bourbon court, swept through the great cities of Europe. Whether entertaining in Venice or Mayfair, it became fashionable for wealthy hosts to have their desserts laid out in the garden manner. In candlelit palazzi on the Grand Canal, tables sparkled with mirrors covered in swirling parterres, triumphal arches and fountains of brightly coloured Murano glass. In 1765 the Duke of Gordon purchased a complete garden dessert from the Berkeley Square confectioner Domenico Negri. For £25-7s-9d, he was able to entertain his friends at a table decorated with a brass-framed plateau adorned with Bow figures, china swans, glass fountains, parterres, a china umbrella and a kaleidoscopic display of sugar plums and bonbons. A surviving trade card advertising Negri’s shop is illustrated with fantasy temples, pagodas and fountains.

Professional French confectioners had started to publish illustrations and do-it-yourself directions to lay out table garden-centrepieces. The first to do so was Menon, whose La Science du Maître d’Hôtel Confiseur, published in Paris in 1749, contains detailed etchings of plateau desserts with sugar buildings, balustrades and classical sculpture. The most important of these shows a dessert honouring the sorceress Circe, who through her magical powers turned Ulysses’ men into swine. The irony of an allegory of greed would not have been lost on the diners, who had already consumed two or three courses of savoury foods and entremets. Publication of designs of this sort tended to codify these table layouts and spread a taste for them far beyond the royal courts.

Menon’s contemporary Joseph Gilliers also published some celebrated plates showing how to lay out a dessert in the most fashionable manner, including one, which illustrates a setting where even the table is in the form of a garden parterre. Gilliers’ fantasy table gardens combine standard rococo decorative motifs with chinoiserie elements, which make them more light-hearted than Menon’s more formally articulated baroque designs. This was in keeping with prevailing tastes at the court of Louis XV, where a sentimental hedonism prevailed in the matter of laying out a dessert. Ornamental statuary still dominated the tabletop plateau, but at court, it was more likely to be made from porcelain than sugar paste.

Despite the competition of the porcelain factories, confectioners continued to make table ornaments from sugar paste. Gilliers illustrates designs for some very ambitious rococo centrepieces in the form of fountains and candle holders adorned with Chinese peasants and putti. These would have been a challenge to the most skilled confectioner, as sugar paste is a difficult medium. It dries out quickly on the surface, but remains soft within, which encourages surface cracking if the work is moved. Its extreme elasticity also encourages slumping in large freestanding structures, which as a result require the support of wires or armatures. Despite these limitations, it was used to create the most extraordinary ornamental features.