Brothers Jean-Pierre and Ami Huaut painted this cup and saucer in coloured enamels on copper. Both pieces are mounted in gold to enrich their overall appearance as well as more practically to protect the enamel and disguise the copper edges. These skilled artists, along with their elder brother Pierre, learned enamelling from their father, also Pierre, a Huguenot who had left France by 1630 for Protestant Switzerland. After working for some years as enamellers to the Brandenburg court in Berlin, Jean-Pierre and Ami moved back to Geneva in 1700 where they worked until their deaths in 1723 and 1724 respectively.

The brothers specialised in painting watch-cases with delicate mythological, allegorical and Biblical subjects after engraved sources. This cup and saucer is a more unusual object type in their production and is among their best work. The decorative motifs are typical manifestations of late Baroque ornament with flower garlands, acanthus leaves, putti and masks. A landscape underneath the saucer features picturesque ruins and in the central medallion inside the saucer a fashionable lady sits décolletée before her mirror, presumably at her toilette. The other medallions contain mythological scenes, most involving Roman goddesses and their lovers.