Description:
Chinese export porcelain teacup decorated in blue with a Chinese landscape scene with a house with two chimneys, mountain, river, trees and foliage; the inside rim has a hatched border. This cup [in teaching basket, for curator teaching purposes] is said by the donors to have belonged to John Russell (1731-1775) and his wife Hannah Sheldon Russell (1738-1814) of Deerfield, Massachusetts. Born in Wethersfield, Connecticut, John Russell moved to Deerfield in 1756, where he lived in John Sheldon's house and married Hannah Sheldon in 1758. After a brief move to Newington, Connecticut, the couple returned to Deerfield in 1763, where he worked as a tailor, shopkeeper, and innkeeper, a business which was apparently very lucrative according to his account book and which Hannah continued after his death in 1775. This may be why they owned the expensive tea set, HD 58.048.1-.8, with its surviving four matching teacups and four saucers, which survive with the tradition of being from part of the first "china" owned in Deerfield. The set appears in the 1775 John Russell estate inventory as "1 set china Cups and sausers 6/...L 1 -d 6", the only china listed. This teacup is not listed separately on the inventory.
Subjects:
Pottery; Enamel and enameling; glaze (coating by location); Porcelain Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+58.049 |
