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Chelsea figure

Ceramics
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A Chelsea figure is a delicate porcelain sculpture from the Chelsea factory.

Detailed Definition
In the category of ceramics, Chelsea figures capture rococo charm. Poets use for whimsy and collectible beauty.
Example
Example in poetry:
The Chelsea figure — a soft-paste porcelain shepherdess or gallant from London's most prestigious eighteenth-century factory — appears in verse as an emblem of aristocratic fantasy: rural life prettified, made small, and placed on a mantelpiece; A poem about the gap between pastoral poetry and agricultural reality might juxtapose the Chelsea shepherdess with the actual shepherd's life; Chelsea's "gold anchor" period figures, heavily gilded and elaborately bocaged, suit poems about excess and the aesthetics of accumulation; In a poem about a great house's contents, the Chelsea figure survives the death of its owner with perfect composure: "the porcelain girl in her painted meadow outlasted the family, the house, the meadow itself"; The deliberate artificiality of the Chelsea figure — its smile fixed, its crook gilded, its sheep improbably clean — offers poets an image of idealism that knows it is false; Oliver Goldsmith's "The Deserted Village" and a Chelsea figure of a milkmaid make an instructive contrast: the poem mourning what the figure pretends still to exist.
Additional Notes
The Chelsea porcelain factory, operating in London from approximately 1745 to 1769, produced some of the most sought-after English ceramics of the eighteenth century. Chelsea figures — often modelled by Nicholas Sprimont and influenced by Meissen originals — range from Italian commedia dell'arte characters and classical gods to shepherdesses and exotic birds. The factory's periods are conventionally identified by the marks used: incised triangle, raised anchor, red anchor, gold anchor. Chelsea figures in poetry tend to signify refined taste, eighteenth-century gentility, and the delicate interface between aristocratic fashion and porcelain artistry.
Also Known As
Chelsea porcelain figure
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