Chinese Export Porcelain Famille Rose Teapot Stand With Puce Diaper Border, Circa 1775

Details

Description

Chinese Export Porcelain Famille Rose Teapot Stand with Puce Diaper Border,
Qianlong Period, Circa 1775

This Chinese export porcelain teapot … Read more Chinese Export Porcelain Famille Rose Teapot Stand with Puce Diaper Border,
Qianlong Period, Circa 1775

This Chinese export porcelain teapot stand is of shallow hexagonal form with gently lobed sides, a raised rim and a flat base without a footrim. It is enameled in the famille rose palette, and the well is centered with a loose bouquet of flowers: a full-blown pink rose at its heart, surrounded by a pink tulip, a purple rose, a mauve flower with an iron-red center, two iron-red flowerheads, clusters of small puce and purple buds and a spray of iron-red berries, all among leaves in green and iron-brown. A small iron-red dragonfly hovers above the bouquet, and smaller sprays of flowers are scattered around the well.

The rim is painted with a wide border of puce trellis diaper, each cell centered with a dot of deeper ruby, interrupted by four shaped cartouches of paler pink trellis. The border is edged on its inner side with iron-red and gilt scrolls, and from each cartouche a small spray of iron-red flowers with green leaves hangs into the well. The naturalistic bouquet with its attendant insect follows the European manner of flower painting that Chinese enamelers adopted for the Western market, while the dotted diaper border with cartouches is characteristic of export porcelain of the 1770s.

Small in scale and strong in color, the stand works well on a side table or bookshelf, beneath a teapot or as a tray for rings and small objects, and sits comfortably within a grouping of Chinese export porcelain or in a traditional or chinoiserie interior.

Dimensions
Width: 5¼ inches (13.3 cm)
Depth: 4⅞ inches (12.4 cm)
Height: 1 inch (2.5 cm)

Marks
Unmarked.

Provenance
Earle D. Vandekar of Knightsbridge

Condition
Good.

References
Winterthur Museum, Delaware, teapot stand, Jingdezhen, 1770–1785, accession no. 1965.0564, bequest of Henry Francis du Pont (a teapot stand of almost identical size).

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, hexagonal teapot stand or pattipan with the arms of Seymour, about 1748, accession no. 51.1170.

Franck Goddio and Evelyne Jay Guyot de Saint Michel, Griffin: On the Route of an East Indiaman (1999), pp. 240–242 (a dish of similar shape from the wreck of the Griffin, 1761).

David Howard and John Ayers, China for the West (London and New York: Sotheby Parke Bernet, 1978).

C. J. A. Jörg, Porcelain and the Dutch China Trade (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982).

Historical Context
Teapot stands formed part of the tea services shipped from Canton in great numbers by the East India companies during the eighteenth century, alongside the teapot, tea bowls and saucers, milk jug, sugar bowl, slop bowl, tea canister and spoon tray, and their purpose was to protect the polished surface of the tea table from the heat and drips of the pot. The small hexagonal form, sometimes recorded as a pattipan, was made over several decades: the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, has an armorial example of about 1748, Winterthur has a teapot stand of almost identical size dated 1770–1785, and a dish of similar shape was recovered from the wreck of the English East Indiaman Griffin, lost in the Sulu Sea in 1761.

The famille rose palette takes its name from the opaque pink enamel, colored with colloidal gold, that appeared on Chinese porcelain in the 1720s and ranges from pale pink to the deeper puce and ruby tones of this border. By the later eighteenth century most export porcelain was potted at Jingdezhen and enameled in workshops at Canton, where painters adapted their work to the taste of Western buyers; loose European-style bouquets and scattered sprays of flowers, ultimately derived from Meissen, were among the most popular decorations of the period.

(Ref: NY10197-xmr) See less