This pierced porcelain basket was made at the Chantilly factory, south of Paris, in about 1770. The basket shape suggests it was intended for serving fruit as part of the dessert course. The fruit could have been fresh, crystallised or preserved in some other way, perhaps with sweet glazes and sprinkled with icing sugar. In France porcelain baskets were first made by the Vincennes/Sèvres factory in about 1753. They were sometimes called 'marronières' in the factory records and as the name suggests, were for serving preserved chestnuts 'marrons glacés'.

The Chantilly factory was founded in 1730 by Louis-Henry, duc de Bourbon and prince de Condé (1692-1740) after he had been banished from court, where he had been Louis XVI's prime minister between 1723 and 1726. A great patron of the arts, the prince embellished his château and domaine with paintings, sculptures, tapestries and decorative arts of every kind. He bought expensive imported porcelains from China and Japan in quantity and this enthusiasm for porcelain suggests that it is perhaps not surprising that he chose to establish his own porcelain factory in the town of Chantilly to imitate the expensive imported wares. He employed Cicaire Cirou, an experienced potter who had worked at the St. Cloud porcelain on the production and decoration of tin-glazed earthenware (called faïence in French) and the creamy white soft-paste porcelain made there. True porcelain, as made in the Far East and at Meissen in Germany, could not be made in France at this time as one essential ingredient, kaolin, had not been found there. Instead, so called 'soft-paste' porcelain was made utilising other materials in place of kaolin, and while early French porcelain lacks the glassy hardness of true porcelain, it has a special charm of its own. A peculiarity of Chantilly porcelains -- one visible here -- is that they often have a dead-white glaze opacified by the addition of tin oxide (in the manner of tin-glazed earthenware), presumably in an attempt to imitate the whiteness of Asian porcelains.

Production started at the new manufactory in 1731 and in 1735 it was granted a royal 'privilège' for a period of twenty years, giving it permission to make porcelain of all kinds in imitation of Japanese wares. The early porcelains made at Chantilly resemble closely Japanese 'kakiemon' wares and were no doubt made copying original items in the collection of the prince de Condé. By the 1750s the porcelain body had improved and a wider range of decoration is found, imitating the products of the royal porcelain factory of Vincennes, in fact there were a number of potters recorded at Chantilly who came from Vincennes or vice versa.

While Chantilly service plates can be found in many collections, larger service items, 'pièces de forme', like this basket are not commonly found today. One rare surviving service which, although divided between many different collections, still has many of its shapes, is the Anemone Service made between 1755-60 for use at the court of the Duke and Duchess of Parma. (Madame Infante, eldest daughter of Louis XV became Duchess of Parma in 1748.) A wide range of service items are known inspired by those in use at Sèvres, including baskets, chestnut baskets, wine bottle coolers, juice cups, cheese dishes, bowls and plates.