The Chelsea Maypole Group in the Fitzwilliam Museum, its iconography, purpose and history

摘要

The Chelsea porcelain figure group known as the Maypole Group currently lies in a fragmentary state. (1, 2) Composed of six dancers joining hands around a mound surmounted by a tree, a fiddler and a drunkard, the piece was produced at the Chelsea factory around 1755 and bears the red anchor mark employed by the factory during this period. It was, at an unknown point in its history, smashed into over one hundred pieces and painstakingly glued back together.