The earliest porcelain figures were made for the dessert course of grand dinners and replaced the sugar paste and wax figures made since medieval times for royal feasts. Originally intended as expressions of dynastic power and to celebrate political allegiances, by the 16th century allegorical themes had been introduced into these table settings. By the 18th century many were entirely decorative. Meissen in Germany was the first factory to make porcelain figures for the dessert. It set the sculptural conventions followed by porcelain factories elsewhere.

This figure of a kneeling black woman is probably modelled after a Meissen original and has the practical function of serving as a candlestick (with its pair 414:16-1885). The figure wears a long floral robe and a blue sash around her waist. Her arms are raised to a white veil from which flower petals emerge, forming the greasepan of the candlestick. At least 10,000 people of the African diaspora are estimated to have been living in 18th century England, most working as enslaved people used as exoticised motifs as domestic servants for elite families. For their affluent owners these people of the African diaspora were othered and aestheticised, presented as homogenous status symbols who were used to make their hosts look cosmopolitan and global in appearance. She represents a highly exoticised, racist and homogenous view of Africa from a male-dominated colonial Western perspective.