18th Century Dutch Delft Blue & White Chinoiserie Punch Bowl, Circa 1720

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A wonderful Dutch Delft punch bowl from around 1720, painted in that deep, inky cobalt that made Delft famous, on … Read more A wonderful Dutch Delft punch bowl from around 1720, painted in that deep, inky cobalt that made Delft famous, on a soft white tin glaze with all the warmth of three centuries. Around the outside, six round medallions of flowering plants alternate with rich blue panels of hanging fruit — the little berries picked out in a speckled pattern that shows the painter’s hand at work — above a skirt of stylized blossoms running down to the foot. Tip it toward you and there’s a quiet reward inside: a small sketched garden of flowers at the bottom and a scattering of dots and rings around the wall, the kind of unhurried detail that makes early Delft so appealing.

Bowls like this were the center of the party in the eighteenth century — punch was mixed and ladled straight from them — and the Delft potters made them to impress, in imitation of the Chinese porcelain the Dutch East India Company was bringing home by the shipload. This one dates from the very peak of the industry, and the blue is as vivid as the day it was fired.
Let it hold pride of place on a console, fill it with clementines or paperwhites on a kitchen island, or set it among blue-and-white ginger jars on a bookshelf or mantel. It’s equally at home in a Hamptons hallway, a farmhouse hutch, or a classic English-style library — blue and white goes absolutely everywhere.

(Ref: NY10792-umrx) See less