A RARE CHINA TRADE TEABOWL AND SAUCER

CIRCA 1745

Details

A RARE CHINA TRADE TEABOWL AND SAUCER
CIRCA 1745
A Chinese tea merchant and a Western trader sit in the anteroom of a tea packing warehouse as Chinese workers pour out tea from baskets and pack it into crates for the voyage back to Europe, other Westerners observing the laborers closely, the teabowl's other side showing two Chinese pipe-smokers having tea while further workers pack tea under Westerners' supervision, all within gilt flowering vine
5 1/8 inches (13 cm) diameter (2)

Provenance

With Herbert Schiffer Antiques, Exton, Pennsylvania

Literature

Published by H, P and N Schiffer, China for America: Export Porcelain of the 18th and 19th Centuries, p 181

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Lot Essay

Tea was crucial to the China trade, accounting for as much as 70 of the VOC's annual investment, for example, its gross profits as high as 100 And yet the subject is rare on Chinese export porcelain. Three tea services showing trade scenes are known to have been made; K I Choi Jr, in Tea and design in Chinese export painting (The Magazine Antiques, October 1998), discusses the Chinese watercolor albums whose compositions inspired their decoration. Only a very few pieces of these services showing trade scenes survive. A teabowl and saucer from the same remarkable service as the present lot was sold Christie's, London, 26 July 1976 and again Christie's, New York, 21 January 1999, and is illustrated by Hervouët & Bruneau (op cit, p 32). The Khalil Rizk collection included a rare tea caddy from another set, depicting Chinese and Western merchants transacting business, and sold Sotheby's, New York, 25 April 2008, lot 153.

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