Pair of foot baths or basins.
Category
Ceramics
Date
1775 - 1825
Materials
Porcelain, cobalt
Measurements
148 mm (Height); 538 mm (Diameter)
Place of origin
Jingdezhen
Order this imageCollection
Saltram, Devon
NT 870767
Summary
Pair of foot baths or basins, porcelain, round with slightly everting sides and flat rims, made in Jingdezhen, Jiangxi Province, China, 1775–1825, decorated in underglaze blue with in the centre a landscape with mountains, water buildings and trees and with a pair of figures in the foreground, the rims with a ‘Fitzhugh’ border of inward-facing spearheads with a band of diaper pattern, the exterior sides with four sprays of flowers.
Full description
The kind of Chinese landscape depicted on these basins was the model for the ‘willow pattern’ landscape developed as decoration for Staffordshire glazed earthenware from about 1790 (Copeland 1980). The ‘Fitzhugh’ border was named after a family of East India Company ship commanders and merchants who commissioned Chinese porcelain decorated in this way (Kerr and Mengoni 2011). The motif of a pair of figures shown in an area reserved against the surrounding blue is also seen on a blue and white porcelain bowl at Saltram, NT 870908, and on a pair of drum-shaped porcelain stools at Dyrham Park, NT 452166.1-2.
Provenance
Given to the National Trust by Montagu Brownlow Parker, 5th Earl of Morley (1878-1962), 1957.
References
Copeland 1980: Robert Copeland, Spode’s Willow Pattern and Other Designs After the Chinese, London, 1980., pp. 33-34 Kerr and Mengoni 2011: Rose Kerr and Luisa E. Mengoni, Chinese Export Ceramics, London, 2011, p. 30