Show me:
and
Clear all filters

  • 33 items
  • 25 items Explore
  • 89 items
  • 3,540 items Explore
  • 97 items Explore
  • 14 items
  • 4 items
  • 220 items
  • 13,858 items Explore
  • 211 items Explore
  • 1,225 items Explore
  • 8,754 items Explore
  • 5,063 items Explore
  • 62 items Explore
  • 165 items Explore
  • 13,108 items Explore
  • 13,620 items Explore
  • 4,802 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 5 items
  • 149 items Explore
  • 2,002 items Explore
  • 4,756 items Explore
  • 438 items Explore
  • 267 items
  • 106 items Explore
  • 19,975 items Explore
  • 36 items Explore
  • 1,912 items Explore
  • 1,083 items Explore
  • 5 items
  • 2,166 items Explore
  • 455 items Explore
  • 920 items Explore
  • 1 items Explore
  • 5 items
  • 7 items
  • 20,385 items Explore
  • 800 items Explore
  • 19 items
  • 73 items Explore
  • 33 items
  • 792 items
  • 20 items
  • 4 items
  • 26 items
  • 61 items
  • 28 items
  • 319 items Explore
  • 6 items
  • 44 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 2 items
  • 2 items
  • 9 items
  • 122 items Explore
  • 119 items
  • 1 items
  • 926 items Explore
  • 724 items
  • 95 items
  • 27 items
  • 38,098 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 3,880 items Explore
  • 1,533 items Explore
  • 403 items
  • 125 items Explore
  • 10,750 items Explore
  • 9,682 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 1 items
  • 38 items
  • 3 items
  • 4 items
  • 6,781 items Explore
  • 2 items
  • 7,364 items Explore
  • 4,929 items Explore
  • 2,005 items Explore
  • 1,195 items Explore
  • 23,839 items Explore
  • 3,660 items Explore
  • 17 items
  • 5 items
  • 334 items
  • 106 items
  • 1 items
  • 3,330 items Explore
  • 23 items Explore
  • 374 items Explore
  • 796 items Explore
  • 1,087 items Explore
  • 514 items Explore
  • 1,519 items Explore
  • 89 items
  • 125 items Explore
  • 6,954 items Explore
  • 76 items
  • 108 items
  • 4 items
  • 2 items
  • 63 items
  • 2 items
  • 2,932 items Explore
  • 1,529 items Explore
  • 203 items
  • 90 items
  • 22,304 items Explore
  • 1,340 items Explore
  • 138 items
  • 848 items Explore
  • 32 items
  • 1 items
  • 122 items Explore
  • 40 items
  • 20 items
  • 252 items
  • 313 items
  • 687 items Explore
  • 344 items Explore
  • 2,429 items
  • 2,535 items
  • 3 items
  • 1 items
  • 4,394 items Explore
  • 40,355 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 3,293 items Explore
  • 275 items Explore
  • 8,876 items Explore
  • 31 items
  • 25 items
  • 304 items Explore
  • 776 items Explore
  • 3 items
  • 65 items
  • 161 items
  • 50 items
  • 52 items
  • 24,010 items Explore
  • 916 items
  • 66 items
  • 22,648 items Explore
  • 2 items
  • 2,336 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 1,028 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 759 items
  • 499 items
  • 4 items
  • 3,309 items Explore
  • 179 items
  • 59 items
  • 455 items Explore
  • 3 items
  • 21 items
  • 90 items Explore
  • 76 items
  • 281 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 6 items
  • 128 items
  • 295 items
  • 447 items
  • 287 items
  • 1 items
  • 906 items Explore
  • 276 items Explore
  • 481 items
  • 11,295 items Explore
  • 755 items Explore
  • 6,020 items Explore
  • 8,302 items Explore
  • 27 items
  • 1 items
  • 5,971 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 3,725 items Explore
  • 9,182 items Explore
  • 7,886 items Explore
  • 182 items
  • 19 items
  • 144 items
  • 7 items
  • 853 items Explore
  • 19 items
  • 8 items
  • 1,096 items Explore
  • 270 items
  • 1 items
  • 2,122 items
  • 1 items
  • 3,543 items Explore
  • 695 items Explore
  • 18 items
  • 134 items
  • 6,738 items Explore
  • 95 items
  • 18,934 items Explore
  • 3,137 items Explore
  • 3 items
  • 7 items
  • 10,979 items Explore
  • 37 items
  • 2 items
  • 21,448 items Explore
  • 35 items
  • 13,321 items Explore
  • 3,460 items Explore
  • 5,645 items Explore
  • 33 items
  • 51,857 items Explore
  • 41 items
  • 646 items Explore
  • 417 items
  • 26,949 items Explore
  • 216 items
  • 3 items
  • 1 items
  • 35 items
  • 27 items
  • 445 items Explore
  • 636 items
  • 217 items Explore
  • 13 items
  • 13,766 items Explore
  • 1,360 items Explore
  • 3 items
  • 10,260 items
  • 9 items
  • 10 items
  • 14 items
  • 25 items
  • 1 items
  • 4,537 items Explore
  • 913 items Explore
  • 3 items
  • 1 items
  • 1 items
  • 318 items
  • 509 items Explore
  • 42 items
  • 2,289 items Explore
  • 1,664 items Explore
  • 15 items
  • 1,877 items Explore
  • 150 items
  • 80 items
  • 766 items Explore
  • 3,102 items Explore
  • 44 items
  • 17 items
  • 12 items
  • 10,670 items Explore
  • 23,753 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 3 items
  • 1 items
  • 41 items
  • 1,374 items
  • 177 items Explore
  • 8 items
  • 92 items
  • 1 items
  • 13,586 items Explore
  • 3,612 items Explore
  • 2,904 items Explore
  • 4,534 items Explore
  • 22 items
  • 30 items
  • 6,911 items Explore
  • 4,842 items Explore
  • 2,300 items Explore
  • 2,818 items Explore
  • 2 items
  • 1,900 items Explore
  • 191 items
  • 223 items Explore
  • 421 items Explore
  • 6,110 items Explore
  • 8,729 items Explore
  • 1,833 items Explore
  • 3 items
  • 1 items
  • 5,943 items Explore
  • 3,354 items Explore
  • 11,134 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 84 items
  • 11 items
  • 2,516 items Explore
  • 7 items
  • 24 items
  • 51 items
  • 6 items
  • 1 items
  • 4,291 items Explore
  • 611 items Explore
  • 75 items
  • 17 items
  • 155 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 95 items Explore
  • 458 items
  • 996 items Explore
  • 3,614 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 5 items
  • 2 items
  • 9,671 items Explore
  • 48 items Explore
  • 3 items
  • 7 items
  • 42 items
  • 3 items
  • 13,807 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 1,170 items Explore
  • 92 items
  • 10,565 items Explore
  • 1,920 items
  • 18 items
  • 6,727 items Explore
  • 21 items
  • 12,949 items Explore
  • 1,418 items Explore
  • 8 items
  • 6,176 items Explore
  • 14,885 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 1,667 items Explore
  • 181 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 16 items
  • 5,683 items Explore
  • 12,284 items Explore
  • 48 items
  • 25 items
  • 2 items
  • 3 items
  • 7,191 items Explore
  • 357 items Explore
  • 13 items
  • 6 items
  • 103 items Explore
  • 7 items
  • 5 items
  • 485 items
  • 688 items Explore
  • 8,391 items Explore
  • 58 items
  • 1 items
  • 7,347 items Explore
  • 5 items
  • 26 items
  • 4,741 items Explore
  • 428 items
  • 339 items Explore
  • 12,715 items Explore
  • 55 items
  • 20 items
  • 7 items
  • 4 items
  • 325 items Explore
  • 427 items
  • 458 items
  • 1 items
  • 3,694 items Explore
  • 27 items
  • 1,238 items Explore
  • 2,503 items Explore
  • 1,123 items Explore
  • 36 items
  • 1,139 items Explore
  • 97 items Explore
  • 24 items
  • 229 items Explore
  • 80,432 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 3,139 items Explore
  • 2,871 items Explore
  • 24 items
  • 5,352 items Explore
  • 1,831 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 17,515 items Explore
  • 4,931 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 7 items
  • 631 items Explore
  • 85 items
  • 31 items
  • 1 items
  • 76 items
  • 29 items
  • 86 items
  • 3 items
  • 1,176 items Explore
  • 109 items
  • 805 items
  • 13,209 items Explore
  • 27 items
  • 13 items
  • 1,710 items Explore
  • 217 items
  • 17,042 items Explore
  • 85 items
  • 17 items
  • 1 items
  • 8 items
  • 324 items
  • 2 items
  • 631 items Explore
  • 1,592 items Explore
  • 8 items
  • 1,130 items Explore
  • 393 items
  • 1 items
  • 2 items
  • 354 items

Select a time period

Or choose a specific year

Clear all filters

A Zhangzhou teapot

Category

Ceramics

Date

circa 1650 - circa 1680

Materials

porcelain; gilded silver

Measurements

110 mm (H)170 mm (W)115 mm (D)

Place of origin

China/Fujian/Zhuangzhou

Order this image

Collection

Ham House, Surrey

NT 1139006

Summary

A Zhangzhou teapot, Fujian province, China, around 1650–70, with silver-gilt mounts added in London around 1660–80.

Full description

A 1679 inventory of Ham House, Surrey, lists in the White Closet, ‘One Indian furnace for tee garnish’d wt Silver’, a description which matches this Chinese ivory-coloured porcelain with gilt-silver mounts. This White Closet is next to the Private Closet, where the erudite Elizabeth Maitland, née Murray (1626–98, Duchess of Lauderdale and Countess of Dysart, kept her books and tea equipage; it was exotically furnished with a Tonquin (Vietnamese) or Javanese lacquer tea table (see NT 1140034) and and English 'Japan'd back stooles'. Such gold or gilt-metal mounted teapots, often of white porcelain, are mentioned in other inventories of the period: a 1669 inventory of Queen Henrietta Maria at château de Colombes, near Paris, lists ‘An Indian thea pot, garnish with gold’, and a 1688 inventory of Anne, Countess of Exeter, at Burghley House, Lincolnshire, includes ‘1 white teapot and cover, guilt spout and chaine to it.’ Devotees of the new beverage relied on first-hand accounts of China’s tea culture, as found in such books as ‘Divers voyage et missions du P. Alexandre de Rhodes en la Chine’, published in Paris in 1666 – a copy was at Ham until 1687. As well as describing the taste, cost and virtues of tea, it also explained how to prepare it. Water was boiled in a clean teapot, removed from the fire, tea leaves added, the cover secured and when the leaves sank to the bottom, it was ready to pour. A short-lived practice of building water in costly ceramic teapots over a coal-burning brazier or spirit-fuelled lamp is depicted in a book by Nicolas de Blegny, ‘Le Bon usage du thé, du caffé et du chocolat pour la preservation et pour la guérison des maladies’ (Paris, 1687). A brazier also appears in a Dutch tea-drinking scene of around 1670, painted by Roelof Koets II. Early treatises emphasise the need to trap evaporating steam by sealing all openings to hasten boiling, which explains why teapots were mounted with chained stoppers to plug the spouts. The ‘Indian furnace for tee’ at Ham may thus have described a ceramic teapot and its metal brazier. Alternatively, in his 1665 tea manual the Danish physician Simon Paulli illustrated a Chinese box-like contraption of copper with a divided interior, one for boiling water and another for infusing and dispensing tea, which was identified in the book’s 1746 English translation as a ‘furnace’. The Ham teapot, with its under-fired, heavily crackled glaze, was a product of the Zhangzhou kilns, in Fujian province. Zhangzhou was an important trading port in the illegal junk trade controlled by the Sheng family based in Taiwan, where the English East India Company had a factory or trading post between 1670 and 1683. On arrival in England, the previous teapot was elaborately mounted with a tight-fitting collar on the cover and a spout-plug attached to a chain. It was sold in the 1950s by Ham’s former owner Sir Lyonel Tollemache, 5th Baronet (1886–1969) to the antiques dealer Ronald A. Lee. In 1994, Lee presented it to the National Trust trough the Art Fund, in memory of his wife Betty. Text adapted from Patricia F. Ferguson, Ceramics: 400 Years of British Collecting in 100 Masterpieces, Philip Wilson Publishers, 2016. -

Provenance

By repute owned by Elizabeth Murray, Countess of Dysart and later Countess and Duchess of Lauderdale (1626-1698), and thence by descent at Ham House; sold by Sir Lyonel Tollemache, 4th Bt. (1854-1952) to Ronald Lee in the late 1940s; presented by Ronald Lee to the National Trust via the Art Fund (then called the National Art Collections Fund) in memory of his wife Betty, 1994 (together with a Chinese porcelain chamber pot, inv. 1139005).

Credit line

The Dysart Collection, Ham House, Surrey, National Trust Collections

References

Ferguson 2016: Patricia F. Ferguson, Ceramics: 400 Years of British Collecting in 100 Masterpieces, Philip Wilson Publishers, 2016, pp. 28-9. Rowell 2013 Christopher Rowell (ed.), Ham House 400 Years of Collecting and Patronage, Yale, 2013

View more details