The objects on display in “A Taste for Opulence: Sevres Porcelain From the Collection” at the Metropolitan Museum are not your grandmother’s china – unless you are very fortunate. At the time of production, they represented the absolute pinnacle of progressive design; they are still some of the most visually interesting and socially charged objects around, and have inspired a range of artists from Rodin to Cindy Sherman. This show should reorient 21st-century eyes to the innovative vision of 18th-century Sevres porcelain.

The history of Europe’s race to discover China’s recipe for true, hard-paste porcelain – for a real Arcanum promising untold wealth and European supremacy – reads like a murder mystery ripe with international intrigue, treason, piracy, financial hemorrhaging, insanity, and death. Germany’s Meissen factory cracked the code in 1710. No matter that the shapes and surface decoration of this new porcelain were essentially imitations of Baroque silver shapes or copies of Chinese examples: The golden ring was won, and the French had to respond or risk losing valued clientele. Sevres’s response was to push the envelope, redefining the conception of what porcelain could be. In the process, the factory produced some of the most spectacular decorative objects ever made and became the international standard of excellence and innovation.

The Met has one of the world’s finest collections of 18th-century Sevres porcelain, including incomparable holdings of furniture decorated with Sevres plaques. The museum has put on display approximately 90 of these pieces for the current exhibition. This handsome and important show aims to highlight the diversity of forms and surface decoration that became the hallmark of 18th-century Sevres and was the very reason for its ascendancy to the top of the decorative-arts food chain. Ranging from 1749 to 1791 – essentially the Rococo to the Neoclassical – the objects in the Met’s exhibition are a good introduction to anyone unfamiliar with the porcelain produced at Sevres.

Standing in the middle of the firstfloor gallery surrounded by these porcelain confections, I felt as if I were interrupting some alien invasion. A wondrous sense of the Other permeates the gallery; the viewer has entered the heady locus where fantasy and reality meld. Although these items are grounded in their history as functional objects – here is a vase, there is a cup and saucer – function is forced to share with form as the ma terial, the inherent “porcelain-ness,” asserts itself.

Each piece in the exhibition is its own theater of innovation.The pair of “Vases en Tour” (1763) exists on the border of sculpture. Moving from bottom to top, what begins as a straightforward vase with swags of delicate flowers, ribbons, and wreaths explodes into a highly detailed sculptural representation of a gun turret, complete with a fish scale-shaped shingled roof, look-out windows, and decorative railing. Tiny gilt cannons protrude from cut holes.What should read as an absolute statement of power – these are essentially phalluses erupting in the glory of war – is diffused by the dollhouse preciousness and beautiful lunacy.

In 1936, Meret Oppenheim covered a cup, saucer, and spoon with fur, thus creating his iconic “Object.” This impulse to mimic (or, in Oppenheim’s case, affix the actual material to the object) one material’s physical properties using an entirely different material finds its precedent in Sevres, where gemstones, wood, marble, lapis, various fabrics, and even water were all rendered in flat, painted decoration. Displayed in a vitrine at the Met is a pair of green ground vases, called “Vases Cuir” (1765-70), that are decorated to imitate stitched leather panels. They have the tension of a cinched corset and an attention to realistic detail extending to puckering at the seams where the faux gilt thread pierces the ceramic body; intricate knots tie the whole affair together.The work of contemporary ceramicist Hella Jongerius, who embroiders onto porcelain, comes to mind.

The degree of success attained by the artisans of 18th-century Sevres in their drive to produce the most cutting-edge designs is evidenced by the fact that eventually even the Chinese began to produce imitations for sale in Europe. Sevres porcelain may be an acquired taste, but once exposed to it, you will see the world through rose Pompadour glasses, your dreams will play in bleu celeste, and you will forever taste gilded honey on your tongue.

Until August 13 (1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street, 212-535-7710).