Description:
Chinese export porcelain tea set, 38 pieces from the original 45 piece tea service, decorated with the insignia of the Society of the Cincinnati, the eagle badge, over the initials "DT", the cipher of Dr. David Townsend (1753-1829) of Boston, Massachusetts. Townsend served as a surgeon-general of the hospital department during the American Revolution and later practiced medicine in Boston. He was also a charter member of the Society of the Cincinnati, a fraternal group founded in 1783 at the end of the Revolutionary War by American and French military officers; the idea of the Society of the Cincinnati is credited to Major General Henry Knox (1750-1806) who was Washington's first Secretary of War (1785-94). Townsend eventually became Secretary of the Massachusetts State Society of the Cincinnati in 1807 and its President in 1825. This service was a gift from Samuel Shaw (1754-1794), who was an aide-de-camp to General Henry Knox and became secretary of the Society's committee of officers in 1783. In 1784, Shaw was selected for the post of supercargo or ship's agent on the "Empress of China," the first American ship to sail for China; he later made several voyages between New York and Canton, and eventually became the United States’ first Consul to China from 1786 to 1794. While in Canton in 1784, Shaw wanted to have “something emblematic of the institution of the order of the Cincinnati executed upon a set of porcelain.” Shaw furnished a Chinese artisan with several painted designs (two engravings of Minerva, an elegant figure of a military man, and a medal of the Society) that he wished to have combined on porcelain. He realized that the artist “was unable to combine the figures with the least propriety; though there was not one of them which singly he could not copy with the greatest exactness.” While initially expressing his disappointment in the abilities of the Chinese decorators, Shaw eventually commissioned several porcelain tea sets decorated with the Society of the Cincinnati’s emblem using his own gold medal as a model. A shipping receipt and packing list dated January 3, 1791, shows that Shaw purchased nine tea sets for friends, for which he paid 20 dollars for their shipment to America: Henry Jackson, Mr. I. L. Stoddard, Dr. William Eustis, General Benjamin Lincoln, Mr. B. Burk, Governor Hancock, Constant Freeman, Dr. David Townsend, and Major General Henry Knox. Dr. Townsend's teaset was shipped to Boston from Canton on December 20, 1790. After suffering for eight months of a "liver complaint," Shaw died at sea near the Cape of Good Hope on his way home from Canton in 1794. The teaset descended in the Townsend family along with a portrait of Dr. Townsend (HD 65.238.1), his Cincinnati diploma (HD 56.105A), a letter (HD 56.105B) from Shaw, which he enclosed with the shipment, and Society booklet (HD 56.105C). According to a list at the end of Shaw's letter, a standard teaset consisted of 2 teapots with stands, sugar bowl and stand, milk ewer (cream pot), waste bowl, shallow dish, 6 breakfast cups and saucers, and 12 afternoon teacups and saucers. Breakfast cups are teacups slightly larger in size than afternoon cups; reasoning for this inconsistency lies in the "multi-purpose" use of the afternoon cups since, in addition to tea, they were used for wine and punch often served at afternoon tea. This set has 2 teapots, teapot stand, sugar bowl, cream pot, waste bowl, 2 dishes, 6 breakfast cups, 5 large saucers, 11 teacups, and 8 small saucers. A 1957 letter from Horace Gordon noted that several pieces were broken much earlier in the Townsend home. One teacup from this set is owned by the National Museum of History and Technology, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, a gift of G. M. Chapman. This is probably the one piece mentioned in Gordon's letter which Mrs. Townsend said that the son of her sister-in-law had probably sold to the Smithsonian.
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https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+56.105 |
