Bachelier complains that the nature of the paste and glaze was unfavourable to the production of small figures, ‘_luisantes et colorées_,’ like those of Saxony. He claims to have been the first--this was as early as 1748--to recommend the use of white biscuit to reproduce in porcelain, among other things, ‘some of the pastoral ideas of M. Boucher,’ and this style, he tells us, ‘had a great success up to the time when M. Falconet, to whom the department was intrusted in 1757, introduced a more noble style, one more generalised and less subject to the evolution of fashion.’ Falconet was carried off to Russia in 1766, to execute for Catherine II. the great statue of Peter the Great, and Bachelier then took his place. It was under Falconet that the best work was produced in this department, although at a later date such well-known names as Robert le Lorrain, Pajou, Clodion, Pigalle, and Houdon are found upon the books of the Sèvres works. No biscuit statuettes of _pâte tendre_ were made after the year 1777. The models after which the vases and other objects were designed--and each year some fresh form was introduced--are still preserved at Sèvres. We can trace in them, as in the mountings of the contemporary [Illustration: _PLATE XXXVII._ SÈVRES PORCELAIN] furniture, the passage from the _haute rocaille_ of the fifties to the simpler forms in favour at the beginning of the reign of Louis XVI. The fashion of encasing the porcelain of China in metal mounts--for this the large monochrome pieces were preferred--had come in at an earlier period. The contorted forms of the gilt metal undoubtedly bring out by contrast the simple outlines and smooth surfaces of the crackle and celadon vases. In the Jones collection at South Kensington there are some superbly fine examples of this collocation of French and Chinese work. During the sixties and later it became the fashion to combine the ormolu and other kinds of metal-work with the Sèvres porcelain in many new ways, and the _pendules_ of the time show ingenious combinations of the two materials in endless variety. It must be borne in mind that the simpler forms that we associate with the reign of Louis XVI. were already asserting themselves several years before the death of his predecessor. If we examine the choicer pieces in any collection of Sèvres china, we find that the date-marks range within a very small interval of time--a few years on either side of 1760. This narrow limit for the best work is well exemplified both in the Jones collection and at Hertford House. We shall return to this point when describing the turquoise and rose grounds of this time.