Description:
Chinese export porcelain, batavia ware saucer and teacup (HD 2011.4.1) with the exteriors covered with lustrous brown ground and the interiors painted with a simple lakeside scene with small pavilions on promontories, which came from the Geldermalsen shipwreck (also known as the Nanking Cargo). The VOC ship Geldermalsen, built in 1746, was one of the newest and finest Dutch East Indiamen. On January 3rd, 1752, the Geldermalsen on its way to Holland hit a reef and sank about twelve miles away from the Bintan coast, Indonesia. The survivors struggled on in a barge and long boat and reached Batavia (Dutch East Indies, now Jakarta, Indonesia) in eight days. The entire cargo was salvaged by Captain Michael Hatcher in 1986 and was subsequently sold at Christie's in Amsterdam as the "Nanking Cargo." The saucer still has the original Christie's auction sticker attached to the base: "Christie's / Lot / 5600 / The Nanking Cargo" and was one of 1,674 such cups and saucers sold at the auction. This brown-glazed export porcelain is sometimes called Batavia ware or Batavia brown after the Dutch East India Company settlement and trading post of Batavia (modern-day Jakarta, Indonesia) from which most of it was shipped to Europe. The exterior iron-brown wash was popular on inexpensive export china made from the late 17th through the mid-18th century. During the period the color was referred to as "cafe au lait," "brown," "the color of dead leaves," and even "cow dung." This brown glaze ranged from a light to a dark brown, can be left undecorated; decorated with a thin watery gilding; or with reserve panels often shaped like a fan or a leaf showing the underlying white porcelain body embellished with floral designs. The interiors were often decorated in underglaze blue or overglaze enamels. These sturdy wares may have been referred to in VOC records as "coffee house wares" intended for coffee houses and taverns. This cup and saucer may match the "double ordinary coffee cups and saucers" described as "brown with blue and white" that appear in the 1750 order thought to have been used for purchasing the porcelain that went down with the Geldersmalsen. Such teabowls and saucers were not specially commissioned as was evident from the manifest and packing of the "Geldermalsen" cargo. Although this cup and saucer were intended for the Dutch market, these wares are also found in the American context. Nancy Carlisle's "Cherished Possessions: A New England Legacy" illustrates a dummy board depicting Batavian ware ceramics on a tray and Batavian ware ceramics (not shown) that descended in the family of Elizabeth Wendell Smith (1716-1799) of Boston and Falmouth, Maine; and Joyce Geary Volk's "The Warner House" shows a Batavia ware bowl owned by the socially prominent Warner family of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Historic Deerfield has another example of Chinese export porcelain batavian ware in the collection - a single tea cup (HD 87.038) - but that example is combined with rarer overglaze black decoration in the interior.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+2011.4.2 |
