拍品专文
It is a paradox of Chinese export porcelain that, while so many of the standard forms during the 18th Century reproduce to a considerable extent prototypes in European silver, the object which is most quintessentially European in use as part of a dinner service, the soup tureen, is not in its most common form a close copy of a particular Western shape. Although the 'oblong octagonal' characteristic cross-section betrays a non-ceramic origin by its angulariy, there is no style of Western tureen to which one can point as the prototype for an enormous number of such tureens that were an essential component (in different sizes) of almost every 18th Century decent-sized table service.