Designed to serve pickled nuts and fruits during the dessert course of a meal, this small stand is made of more than 72 elements. Each element was individually formed from a refined white clay called kaolin, and the shells—the three lower dishes plus those on the central stalk—were molded from actual shells. Once assembled, the stand was then decorated with cobalt blue, covered with a clear lead glaze, and fired at a high temperature. The extreme heat transformed the clay into the hard, resonant, and translucent material that took its name from the Italian word porcellana (cowrie shell) in the 12th-century. Kaolin naturally occurs in China and North America. British colonials began firing kaolin in Georgia in the 1730s and South Carolina in the 1760s. Gousse Bonnin and George Anthony Morris founded the American China Manufactory, where this stand was made, in Philadelphia in 1770. That colonials were able to make porcelain—a luxurious and mysterious, alchemical material—provided direct evidence that Americans could prosper without the assistance of Great Britain and its mercantile system, emboldening leaders such as Benjamin Franklin and Dr. Benjamin Rush. The pickle stand was the most ambitious form Bonnin and Morris’s manufactory made, and this one—which was made as a wedding gift in 1771—is one of only seven from the factory known to survive.