18th-Century Chinese Export Porcelain Double Peacock Pattern Soup Tureen, Cover & Stand

Details

Description

Chinese Export Famille Rose Double Peacock Soup Tureen, Cover and Stand
Circa 1765

This Chinese export famille rose soup tureen, … Read more Chinese Export Famille Rose Double Peacock Soup Tureen, Cover and Stand
Circa 1765

This Chinese export famille rose soup tureen, cover and stand is painted with the celebrated “Double Peacock” pattern, one of the most distinguished designs produced for the European market in the Qianlong period. The oval stand, its shaped rim scalloped in gentle lobes, and the oval tureen, its swelling bombé sides rising from a spreading molded foot, are decorated en suite with a pair of peacocks perched upon pierced garden rockwork amid flowering peonies, chrysanthemums and leafy branches. The birds are finely rendered, their plumage worked in rich tones of green, blue, ochre and iron-red, the long tail feathers sweeping across the white ground, while a profusion of blossoms in deep rose-pink, coral and soft green fills the surrounding field.

The low domed cover repeats the floral decoration and is surmounted by a boldly modeled pomegranate knop in iron-red and gilt, and the sides of the tureen are flanked by a pair of hare’s-head handles, also in iron-red with gilt spotting. A spearhead border frames the central composition of the stand and runs around the foot of the tureen, while the rims are banded with a running gilt trellis on an iron-red ground, interrupted at intervals by reserved panels of underglaze blue scrolling ornament that lend depth and vivacity to the palette.

A tureen of this scale and color is a natural centerpiece for a dining table or sideboard, and it sits equally well on a console or in a glazed cabinet with other Chinese export or English porcelain, the rose-pink peonies and iron-red borders carrying across both traditional and more eclectic interiors.

Dimensions
Overall, assembled:
Width: 15 inches (38.1 cm)
Depth: 11¾ inches (29.8 cm)
Height: 9¾ inches (24.8 cm)

Tureen:
Width: 13¼ inches (33.7 cm)
Depth: 9¼ inches (23.5 cm)
Height: 9 inches (22.9 cm)

Stand:
Width: 15 inches (38.1 cm)
Depth: 11¾ inches (29.8 cm)
Height: 2½ inches (6.4 cm)

Provenance
Private collection.

Condition
Good antique condition throughout, the vibrant famille rose enamels, underglaze blue borders and extensive gilt highlights remaining remarkably bright, crisp and well preserved across all three components.

Historical Context
The “Double Peacock” pattern, the Serviço dos Pavões of Portuguese and Brazilian collectors, is among the most celebrated of all Chinese export famille rose designs. It was produced in great quantity for the open market, an estimated twenty thousand pieces between about 1750 and 1795, and has always been particularly prized in Portugal, Brazil and England; the Brazilian authority José de Almeida Santos, in his Manual do Colecionador Brasileiro (1950), ranked it the finest of the famille rose services made to European commission and singled out the drawing of the birds. Much of its renown rests on a royal association. The Portuguese royal house owned a service of the design, and when the French invasion of November 1807 drove the Braganza court into exile, the Prince Regent Dom João, King João VI from 1816, sailed for Brazil with his mother, Queen Maria I, and the court, carrying his Chinese porcelain services with him. The Double Peacock service was thereafter used at the Paço de São Cristóvão and the Fazenda Imperial de Santa Cruz, earning the pattern its Brazilian nickname of the “viajante,” or traveling, service. The royal pieces were dispersed at auction in Rio de Janeiro in 1890, after the fall of the Empire, and with the loss of the auctioneer’s records they can no longer be distinguished from other examples. The present tureen is accordingly offered as a fine example of this historic pattern, carrying its royal cachet, rather than as a documented piece of the royal service.

The pattern found favor westward as well, among the wealthy merchant families of the early American republic. Herbert, Peter and Nancy Schiffer, in China for America, illustrate a serving dish of this pattern said to have descended in a prominent Charleston, South Carolina family and now preserved in the Charleston Museum, testimony to the pattern’s prestige across the transatlantic world.

References
José de Almeida Santos, Manual do Colecionador Brasileiro (1950).
Jenny Dreyfus, Louça da Aristocracia no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: Monteiro Soares, 1982), p. 97.
Herbert, Peter and Nancy Schiffer, China for America: Export Porcelain of the 18th and 19th Centuries (Exton, Pennsylvania: Schiffer Publishing, 1980), p. 197. See less