A RARE PORCELAIN TRADE TEABOWL AND SAUCER

CIRCA 1745

Details

A RARE PORCELAIN TRADE TEABOWL AND SAUCER
Circa 1745
The saucer painted with two China traders entering a porcelain shop, the shopkeeper beckoning them inside, an array of goods on the shelves behind them including jars, vases, tea cannisters, fans, albums and scrolls, another Westerner showing a small model of a dog to a Chinese merchant, a third shopkeeper leaning on a counter smoking, this scene repeated in two parts in two panels on the teabowl, all within intricate gilt vine borders with Western landscape and figural vignettes (2)

Provenance

Christie's London, 26 July 1976, lot 134

Lot Essay

One of a very small number of patterns recorded to reflect the daily life of a Western merchant in China, and from what must have been a unique tea service ordered by someone closely involved in the China trade. A teabowl from the Ionides collection, cat. 928, was later in the Mottahedeh collection, no. 211, illustrated by D.S. Howard and J.S. Ayers, op. cit., p. 213; a teabowl in the Rijksmuseum is illustrated by C.J.A. Jorg, op. cit., p. 288; and another in the Princessehof Museum, Leeuwarden, is illustrated by Lunsingh Scheurleer, Chinese Export Porcelain, pl. 57.