Chinese Export Rose Medallion Porcelain Garden Seats, a Pair Circa 1860

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Chinese Export Rose Medallion Porcelain Garden Seats, a Pair
Circa 1860
Jingdezhen and Canton, China, Qing Dynasty

This pair of … Read more Chinese Export Rose Medallion Porcelain Garden Seats, a Pair
Circa 1860
Jingdezhen and Canton, China, Qing Dynasty

This pair of garden seats is of the traditional barrel form, the swelling body drawn in at top and bottom and encircled by four bands of raised gilt bosses in imitation of the nail heads of a studded leather drum. The flat circular top is pierced at the center with a cash-form aperture, and a further pierced cash medallion is set into each side of the body, both practical, allowing air and water to pass, and part of the decorative scheme.

The whole surface is enameled in the famille rose palette in the manner known as Rose Medallion, the ground worked in a dense mosaic of peonies, chrysanthemums, and foliage in rose-pink and green, scattered throughout with butterflies, dragonflies, and small birds, and gilded over. Reserved against it are shaped panels alternating between figure subjects and bird-and-flower compositions: court ladies and attendants gathered on terraces and in pillared interiors, the floors laid in iron-red, and, between them, long-tailed pheasants and butterflies among peony and prunus. The top of each seat carries a further ring of panels radiating from the central medallion, so that the decoration is complete from every angle, including from above.

A pair like this earns its keep indoors as readily as out. Set one at each end of a sofa as drinks tables, flank a fireplace or a pair of doors, stand them either side of a console in an entry hall, or use them singly as a bedside table or a plant stand in a sunroom. At nineteen inches high they take a lamp, a stack of books, or a tray comfortably, and they pull up as extra seating when the room fills. The rose, green, and gold read warm against dark antique furniture and bright against white walls and rattan, and pairs at this scale are what make a hall or a garden room look finished.

Dimensions
Height: 19 inches (48.3 cm)
Diameter: 13½ inches (34.3 cm)

Marks
The footrims are unglazed. One seat is painted beneath in iron-red with the single character 地 (di), meaning earth; the second retains traces of a corresponding painted mark beneath, now largely effaced and no longer legible. Single characters of this kind served the Chinese workshops as batch or tally marks, most often drawn in sequence from the opening of the Thousand Character Classic, of which earth is the second character. No factory or reign mark.

Provenance
New York City private collection.

Condition
Good condition, with no repair or damage. Very light rubbing, as expected, to some of the gilt nail heads, and light surface wear to the tops consistent with use.

Historical Context
The porcelain garden seat, or drum stool, follows the form of the studded barrel-shaped seats of Chinese garden furniture, and the raised bosses seen here are a direct memory of the nails that held the leather to the wooden originals. They were made for use in courtyards, garden pavilions, and verandas, where porcelain stood up to weather that would ruin lacquer or upholstery, and the pierced medallions and open top let the rain run through. Exported to the West in quantity from the middle of the nineteenth century, they were taken up for conservatories and halls and have never gone out of favor since.

Rose Medallion belongs to the family of Cantonese famille rose export wares that begins with Rose Mandarin in the earlier nineteenth century and continues with Rose Medallion and Rose Canton. The porcelain was thrown and fired at Jingdezhen and sent south in the white to Canton, where the enameling shops along the waterfront decorated it for the foreign trade, working to a repertory of figure and bird-and-flower panels on a densely flowered ground. Objects of this size and complexity were the most demanding of the type, and matched pairs of garden seats, which had to survive both the kiln and the voyage, are markedly harder to find than single examples.

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