Small low, covered bowls with matching stands like this were used for serving soups, bouillon and other similar foodstuffs in private apartments at breakfast, through the long hours of the toilette and to ill or disabled people in bed. In France such a tureen would be called an 'écuelle' and in German it was sometimes called a 'Wöchnerinnterrine' or 'maternity tureen'. However, while they certainly were used to serve restorative foods to women after childbirth, they were much more widely used by women as well as by men. Some (but not this one) have covers fitted with feet, enabling this part to be reversed to serve as a plate for dealing with meat or marrow bones. They were not made as part of a dinner service, but were a standard component of toilet services. Being made for personal use, they were usually finely decorated. They were made in porcelain, silver and other materials.

This écuelle has been elaborately decorated with a blue lattice ground resembling embroidery, reserved with shaped cartouches painted with vignettes. Most of these contain cherubs, sometimes called putti or amours, holding different symbols emblematic of a season, an element or a sense. The decorator has used engravings after the important French rococo artist François Boucher (1703-70) as the source for these designs. Boucher was very fashionable in court circles. He had the patronage of Madame de Pompadour, the influential mistress ofthe French King, Louis XV, and was in fact appointed premier peintre du roi in 1765. The popularity of Boucher's work was partly due to the fact that it was widely disseminated in the form of engravings. The Sèvres porcelain factory had a large stock of these which were at the disposal of the painters and were often used during the 1750s and 60s to copy or inspire the decoration on more expensive items such as this.