Description:
Chinese export porcelain 'sample' pattern breakfast cup decorated with eight stylish, Neo-classical designs from solid blue bands to pink and green vine and berry motifs around the rim. A “breakfast cup” versus an “afternoon cup” is a larger capacity vessel usually for serving tea in the morning. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Chinese merchants used sample wares to show customers the range of pattern options, styles of inscriptions, and other decorative elements that could be incorporated into specific orders. Often, 8 possible borders are present, such as on this example, and a customer might select the blue grape vine as the outer and the blue diamond diaper as the interior borders. Orders would be sent through supercargoes or trading agents. Winterthur Museum has two sample pieces, one a pot-de-creme with the initials "AT" or possibly "AJ" which seems to come from an entire dinner service. In Aug, 2004, William Sargent, Curator of Asian Export Art at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass., suggested that a whole service with the initials "AT" or "AJ" may have been made of sample wares; or was the result of an error when the purchaser used a sample border piece and the Chinese merchant misunderstood; or was simply ordered as a novelty if the owner was a porcelain merchant and wanted all the borders. Sargent also noted: "a set of cups in the Philadelphia catalogue each made for the child of a merchant in Philadelphia, and each bearing the child's intials, but each cup is a different sample bordered cup." The Goteborgs Historiska Museum in Sweden, Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, and V&A in London have similar sample plates, with the last inscribed on the back, "Synchong", a Canton merchant. This bowl is decorated on the exterior rim with four different patterns: a brown and pink grape vine with the initials "AT"; a blue and gold grape vine; a pink and green grape vine; and a cross hatched gold field with small blue bellflowers. The interior top rim has four different patterns: A blue diamond diaper; a gold leaf on blue field; a solid blue field; and a small blue dotted ovals on a gold field. The well has a small gilt flower (almost gone); the applied foot rim has a gilt band.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+1999.41 |
