Description:
With no Chinese porcelain protypes to copy, British ceramic tea canisters of the 18th century took several different forms. They are mostly, however, square or octagonal with a wide cylindrical lip, and seem to derive from the japanned metal canisters used for displaying and dispensing tea and coffee in grocers' shops. By contrast, smarter tea canisters of glass or silver tended to copy the wooden tea chest, complete with its wavy metal edging and corners. Only later in the century was the little baluster-shaped canister copied by English porcelain factories (for example, Worcester) which imitated Chinese vase-like versions made solely for export. Soft-paste procelain baluster-shaped tea canister (matching teapot, HD 91.058.1, and stand, HD 91.058.2) with a slightly domed foot and marked on the base with a blue-painted fretted square in a circle, which was made by the Worcester Porcelain Factory. The design, which has alternate spiral bands of stylized flowers in white outlined in gilt on a blue background and pink and red flowers on white, has been called the Queen's or Rich Queen's or Queen Charlotte pattern; and the "Whorl", or spiral design; or the "Wheel" or "Catherine Wheel" (where these last two names reflect the pinwheel-like arrangement of the bands, deriving from the spiked wheel on which Saint Catherine of Alexandria was almost tortured). Despite this Imari-type palette, there is no known Japanese prototype. Worcester's direct model was the interpretation of Chinese porcelain of the Qing Dynasty, Qianlong Period (1736-1795), produced at Meissen beginning in the mid 1730s to about 1740; the earliest Worcester examples date to the late 1750s and were produced until around 1800. The Meissen version differs from the Worcester in having a spirally molded body and a more elaborate design in the central panel of saucers. The pattern appeared on a large range of wares, probably greater in variety than that of any other single pattern. There were also several variants of the pattern, not all of which included the use of underglaze blue. With no Chinese porcelain protypes to copy, British ceramic tea canisters of the 18th century took several different forms. They are mostly, however, square or octagonal with a wide cylindrical lip, and seem to derive from the japanned metal canisters used for displaying and dispensing tea and coffee in grocers' shops. By contrast, smarter tea canisters of glass or silver tended to copy the wooden tea chest, complete with its wavy metal edging and corners. Only later in the century was the little baluster-shaped canister copied by English porcelain factories (for example, Worcester), which imitated Chinese vase-like versions made solely for export.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+91.058.3 |
