Tea service for two people (tête-à-tête)
Empress Maria Theresa of Austria presented this tea service to the pastellist Jean Etienne Liotard, who had portrayed her eleven children in Vienna. The service was made in the Viennese porcelain factory, which had been established by Claudius Innocentius du Paquier in 1718; for this enterprise, he had lured workers away from Meissen. Maria Theresa took over the factory in 1744 and renamed it the Kaiserliche Porzellanmanufaktur.