The classic period of porcelain figures, and the 18th century was dominated by a restricted number of themes, one of the earliest was Chinoiserie, or pseudo Chinese, which had appeared at Meissen by the 1720s. This was not just a porcelain fashion but a European craze that affected furniture and most other aspects of interior decoration, it even appears in architecture,  for example, in the pagoda in Kew Gardens in London.

Chinoiserie went farther than just imitation, it represents European variation upon themes suggested by China.  But was not always authentic Chinese.  If you take the famous Willow pattern, the story originates from western invention and not Chinese,  but this doe's not matter it is the romantic story attached.

Chinoiserie is highly entertaining and informative,  it tells us nothing about China but a lot about 18th century Europe and European attitudes towards China.  As ever these were ambivalent. China was seen as hyper civilised, ethically serious and well governed.

The European intelligentsia particularly admired the Chinese civil service, which had been selected by a system of examinations since the second century BC, though the idea was still revolutionary in 18th century Europe.  On the other hand China was quaint and exotic a land of funny big bellied sages, with parasols, nostalgic lovers looking at the moon and listening to the nightingale, and houses with tip tilted roofs, both viewpoints appear in porcelain.

There are copies of Te-Hua figurines and impressive dignitaries, but on the whole the quaint and even grotesque elements predominated with squatting figures (pagods) mythical beasts and pagodas much in evidence.  Most of the European factories produced Chinoiserie of some kind, and Hochst can boast an unidentified chinesenmeister whose best known work is an oddly sly looking group of a Chinese emperor and his attendants.

On a larger scale there are two porcelain rooms in Chinese style build for Charles III of Naples.  One now in the Capodimonte museum, Naples and the other at Arnjuez in Spain. 

Chinoiserie was the most common expression of the 18th century cult of exotic, but not the only one, figures of Turks and Moors were popular for the same sort of reasons, and so were black men, who are shown as well muscled fantastic black specimens, that is a word away from the realities of the contemporary slave trade.  Questions of accuracy aside, these little figures are one of the most delightful expressions of 18th century exoticism.  Porcelain was the ideal; material for such light-hearted subjects, and Chinoiserie and other exotica stayed extremely popular until the advent of a more serious or pretentious, European style in the 1760s