Custard cup with lid
Label Text
Well-appointed eighteenth century households used sets of small lidded pots, also called “pots de crème” or custard cups, to serve baked and chilled custards, whipped creams, and frothy, alcohol-based syllabubs as part of the dessert course. George Washington ordered “1 Doz[en] China custard cups” from London in 1761, and his inventory lists two sets of cups. Whether this example was his, however, cannot be proven. Martha Washington willed all the “blew and white China” to her granddaughter, Nelly Parke Custis Lewis, but this cup descended in the family of her brother, George Washington Parke Custis. How he acquired it is not known.
For a matching custard cup lid that also descended in the Custis and Lee families, see W-2786/M.
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Date1760-1790
Geography
Made -
China
Medium/TechniquePorcelain (hard-paste)
DimensionsOverall (H x W x D): 3 5/8 in. x 4 in. x 2 9/16 in. (9.21 cm x 10.16 cm x 6.51 cm)
Credit LineGift of Mrs. William Preston Johnston, 1916
Object numberW-500/A-B
DescriptionA: Baluster-shaped, molded cup with a ribbed or reeded lower body and a twisted, reeded, Y-shaped handle with flower terminals, on a shallow foot ring. The cup features underglaze cobalt blue decoration. Around the exterior of the body is a right-anchored landscape with a pavilion complex with a chrysanthemum in a vase sitting on a starred trellis fence in the foreground. A figure on a sampan or flat-bottomed, single-oared boat appears just to the left of the large vase. The handle straps are decorated in blue and the terminals are striped in blue. The exterior rim has a complex border with trellis-diaper, fish roe, Chinese key or fret, and flowers and foliage.
B:
Low-domed, circular lid with a flower-and-leaf knop, ribbed or reeded body, and a wide, flaring flange with shaped edge, on a shallow foot ring. The lid features underglaze cobalt blue decoration. A pavilion on a rocky island appears above the knop and a pair of scenes depicting a bush or tree on a rock appears below it. The flange has a complex border with trellis-diaper, fish roe, Chinese key or fret, and flowers and foliage.
Published ReferencesSusan Gray Detweiler, George Washington's Chinaware (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1982), 166.
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