QIANLONG PERIOD, CIRCA 1770

The mancerina is closely associated with the Hispanic market and with the Spanish custom of chocolate drinking. Both chocolate and silver of course came from the Spanish New World, so it is fitting that this form was often made in silver as well as in Spanish maiolica. It is said that the 2nd Marqués de Mancera, Viceroy of New Spain 1664-1673, had a palsied hand and thus needed the all-in-one cupstand, which took his name, though none survive from this early period. Interestingly, a very similar form exists in Chinese ceramics of the Song period, which may have influenced the development of the export examples.
For a Mexican silver mancerina see H.R. Borrell et al, The Grandeur of Viceregal Mexico, p. 380. An almost identical single export mancerina is in the Museo Nacional de Historia, Mexico City, and illustrated by M. Priyadarshini, Chinese Porcelain in Colonial Mexico, p. 123.