Tea canister
Category
Ceramics
Date
1736 - 1795
Materials
Porcelain, enamel.
Place of origin
Jingdezhen
Order this imageCollection
Saltram, Devon
NT 870820
Summary
Tea canister, porcelain, rectangular with chamfered corners and short supports at the four corners flush with the sides and with a cylindrical lid, made in Jingdezhen, Jiangxi Province, China, Qianlong period (1736–95), with a band of moulded stylised flower petals around the base and applied leaves and flowers on the should, decorated in the famille rose (‘pink family’) palette in pink, green, brown, yellow and black enamels with flowering branches, the top of the lid with a single rosette.
Full description
The square shape is probably derived from European metal tea canisters. The use of several different registers of decoration – realistic, stylised, applied – on the same object is often encountered in 18th-century Chinese decorative art, suggesting playfulness and sophistication. Famille rose porcelain was particularly popular in Europe during the middle and the second half of the 18th century, as it chimed with the taste for brighter and more saturated colours in interiors and fashion during this period (North 2018).
Provenance
At Saltram by 1951 and accepted by HM Treasury in lieu of full payment of Estate Duty from the Executors of Edmund Robert Parker (1877-1951), 4th Earl of Morley and transferred to NT in 1957.
References
North, 1887: Roger North. The autobiography of the Hon. Roger North. Ed. Augustus Jessop. London: A. H. Goose; Norwich: David Nutt, 1887., p. 14