I am awfully fond of Rococo, not so much the seashell and grotto design elements with which it is normally associated, but rather with the naturalism that infects paintings by Watteau or these little figurines from the Metropolitan Musuem of art. The figures remind me of the tchotkes that graced the home of my maternal grandmother. What I like about them is the cheerful color and the “simple” secular pursuits. There’s no religion, no history here.  It reminds me a lot of the opening chapter of Mendelssohn’s Kohelet Musar, a mid-eighteenth century text, where the author finds himself in a field of flowers. Rococo Judaism? If you know how to look, you can find rococo rustic themes in Jewish ritual objects from this period.