For some time now, London-based ceramic sculptor Claire Partington has been examining the intersections between historical English and continental ceramic figures and the empires that loved them. With an early apprenticeship in the stacks at the Victoria & Albert Museum and elsewhere, Partington sites her mock-Meissen/Staffordshire/Sèvres beings within porcelain-world pilgrimage sites such as Musée Ariana in Geneva; the d’Ursel and Gaasbeek castles in Belgium; the Bernardaud (china factory) Foundation in Limoges and, recently in her North American debut, at Seattle Art Museum and nearby Winston Wächter Gallery.