Teapot

Dining scenario - tea service featuring hot water urn (W-107), tray (W-32) and teapot (W-131/A)

Tea set,
c. 1755,
Hard pate porcelain with over glaze enamel

Status

Not on view

Label Text

Even as a bachelor, George Washington acquired choice furnishings which bespoke his gentility and position in Virginia society. He was at the height of elegance in serving Chinese Hyson tea, frequently listed in his orders to and invoices from London, in the "Compleat sett Fine Image China" he received from London in 1757. Famille rose, or overglaze polychrome enamel, scenes of women and children in landscapes were popular on Chinese export tea wares after 1750. Such decoration appealed to Western consumers' desires for exotic, and often playful, imagery on their imported porcelains.

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Datec. 1755

Geography Made - China

Medium/TechniquePorcelain (hard-paste), enamel, gilt

DimensionsOverall: 6 1/2 in. x 9 in. x 4 3/4 in. (16.51 cm x 22.86 cm x 12.07 cm) Other (lid alone): 2 in. x 3 3/4 in. x 3 3/4 in. (5.08 cm x 9.53 cm x 9.53 cm)

Credit LineBequest of Margaret B. Smith, to the memory of Henrietta Elizabeth Smith, Grandniece of Martha Washington, Daughter of Commodore John Dandridge Henley, and Wife of J. Bayard H. Smith, Esq., 1910

Object numberW-131/A

DescriptionPorcelain teapot with globular body, barbed spout, and shaped, ear-lobe handle on a high circular foot; low-domed lid with pointed finial; teapot is decorated on two sides with overglaze polychrome enamel (famille rose) vignettes of a Chinese man and woman standing and looking on as one child lays on the ground and another stands by a woman who is seated on a bench holding a pink fan, all in a garden near a building with a lake in the background, framed by underglaze blue enamel flowers and scrollwork; additional underglaze blue enamel reserves filled with overglaze enamel images of birds amid brush and rocks are on sides above spout and below handle; lid is similarly decorated with underglaze blue enamel reserves featuring a bird amid brush and rocks and underglaze blue flowers; panels of underglaze blue flowers on body and lid are accented with overglaze pink enamel scrolls; spout, handle, and ground between scrollwork picked out in gilt; interior undecorated.
Published ReferencesCadou, Carol Borchert. The George Washington Collection: Fine and Decorative Arts at Mount Vernon (New York: Hudson Hills Press, 2006), pp. 44-45, cat. 4.

Detweiler, Susan Gray, "The Ceramics," Antiques 135, no. 2 (February 1989): 498, pl. II.

Detweiler, Susan Gray. George Washington's Chinaware (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1982), 24, 30-34, figs. 7-8.

Mount Vernon Ladies Association. The Mount Vernon China (Mount Vernon, VA: Mount Vernon Ladies Association, 1949), p. 39.

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