Tea drinking never became as fashionable in France as in other European countries. But the practice existed at an aristocratic level as an alternative to the usual coffee and chocolate. So-called cabaret sets or déjeuners consisted of complete services on a tray for just one or two people. The Sèvres factory gave them the most luxurious treatment, since its patrons were the wealthiest members of French society. The service was orginally owned by a German aristocrat, Christian IV, Duke of Zweibrücken (1722-1775).

Rosalind Savill has researched this interesting service and discovered that Christian IV, known as the duc des Deux-Ponts in France, actually bought four déjeuners on 14th June 1775, costing an exorbitant 840 livres each. They all had the most expensive type of decoration, a richly gilded ground colour and decoration of miniature painted scenes. The Duke was a great francophile and we know he also loved porcelain. He actually had his own porcelain factory in Zweibrücken, whose mark was his PZ monogram. It operated from 1767 until the Duke's death in 1775. Two of the other three services have been traced in auction house records and are presumably in private hands today. They were identified by their distinctive PN monogram - it appears the Sèvres gilder mistook the Duke's PZ monogram for PN .