Object Type
This casket is for scent or other cosmetics. An expensive luxury product, it would have been owned by a fashionable and wealthy woman, and probably kept on a dressing table. Charles Gouyn, who made the porcelain parts, specialized in the manufacture of small personal accessories. He made these for the home market and for export to the Continent.

People
The casket belongs to the so-called 'Girl-in-a-Swing' group of early English porcelains (named after a figure included in the V&A's collections). Historians of English porcelain first identified these as a distinctive group in the 1920s, but their maker was not firmly identified until 1993. They were originally attributed to the Chelsea factory of Nicholas Sprimont (1716-1771). Collectors then suggested that they were probably made at a rival factory set up by Staffordshire workmen who had quit Sprimont's works. Recent research has proved that these figures and wares were made by Charles Gouyn (died 1785). Gouyn was a second-generation jeweller with premises in St James's, London, and he had been a partner in the Chelsea factory until sometime before March 1749. However, the precise location of his factory, and the identity of the modeller of these distinctive figures, remain unknown.