The figure is a close copy of one made in Chinese porcelain. It is the only sculptural model made at Benjamin Lund’s Bristol factory, and as with Bow’s ‘New Canton’ inkwells, may have been made as an advertisement. Only about nine examples of this figure model survive, and these vary considerably in colour and glaze, which is probably indicative of their experimental nature. Lund’s company was said in 1762 to have been established to make porcelain in imitation of ‘East India China Ware’ (meaning Chinese porcelain imported by the East India Company’). It was the first of the two porcelain factories to achieve commercial production in eighteenth-century Bristol – a city in the south-west of England with a long history making tin-glazed earthenware – and was in operation only between about 1749 and 1751. After this date it was taken over and closed down by the Worcester porcelain company, which was not at that stage successfully making porcelain on a commercial scale. Historically, Lund’s works is important for having introduced the mineral steatite (soap rock), as a substitute for the china stone or petuntse used in the manufacture of porcelain. Such porcelains are described as ‘steatitic’. The Bristol porcelain formula was adopted with great commercial success by the Worcester porcelain factory, as well as by others in London, Liverpool and elsewhere in England. The second Bristol factory was founded by William Cookworthy, who in 1768 (at his earlier factory site at Plymouth) became the first in England to manufacture ‘true’ or hard-paste porcelain on a commercial scale.