Kaffeegruppe

This sculptural porcelain group depicts a couple in Turkish dress taking coffee while reclining at the base of a towering pedestal made up of scrolls. The informal and rather risqué pose of the figures captures the lure of the East (or their imagined view of it) for wealthy Europeans in the eighteenth century. The fashion for coffee drinking, which had spread to western Europe from Turkey in the seventeenth century, was in itself, viewed as a fashionable and stylish pastime. Turkish-style fantasies, known by the French term 'turqueries', were popular throughout the eighteenth century, although perhaps are less well-known today than their Chinese counterparts, 'chinoiseries'.