This lemon basket is from a dinner service made at the Meissen porcelain factory in Saxony, Germany, for Frederick the Great of Prussia around 1761. Frederick the Great had visited Meissen several times, placed orders with the factory, received gifts of Meissen porcelain from Augustus III, the Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, and had plans to establish his own rival factory at Berlin before his Prussian forces occupied Saxony for the second time in 1756. Frederick ordered several table services from Meissen during the Prussian occupation of Saxony in the early 1760s. These were intended for his personal use, and he directed and oversaw their design. Artistically this service of 1761, now known as the Möllendorf Service, is the most important.

Many of the tableware shapes and the low relief moulded decoration of the Möllendorf Service were repeated from an earlier service of 1760, which was decorated at Frederick’s order with the same floral cartouches enclosing musical instruments and emblems of war. The handles on the tureen covers of both services were modelled either as Minerva, symbolizing the intelligent conduct of war and wise governance in peacetime, or as nymphs with flowers, fruit, corn or pitchers of wine. This earlier service was in turn inspired by another one, made for Count Bruhl, Prime Minister of Saxony, in 1742. Frederick stipulated in 1761 that his new service should be painted in the combination of the special red enamel and gold reserved at Meissen ‘for the Saxon ruler.’ The design and decoration were therefore in part taken from Saxon court services made for his subdued adversaries, and were politically charged.

The service was begun in 1761, and originally comprised 697 pieces, including 144 dinner plates and 48 soup plates. Dessert plates and possibly also the multi-part plat de ménage (centrepiece with lemon baskets and cruets) were added in 1763. In 1781 Frederick gave the service to General Wichard von Möllendorf, and as a consequence it is now generally known as the Möllendorf Service.

The lemon basket is from the plat de ménage (centrepiece or epergne) of the dinner service, and would have been flanked by sculptural cruets and salts. The two other lower baskets (C.249, C.250-1921) were the central elements of secondary plats de ménage which included other components without figural decoration. These would have been set out symmetrically further along the table to either side of the main plat de ménage. At Meissen, the plat de ménage usually comprised cruets for oil and vinegar, a caster for fine sugar, a mustard pot, a lemon basket, and sometimes salts, all of which were set out on a tray or horizontal structure. Lemons were a status symbol in northern Europe during the eighteenth century, as they were expensive luxuries that had to be imported from countries further south or grown in royal greenhouses, which is why they were given such prominence in these centrepieces. They were used in the preparation and service of fish, meat and salads.