Sugar bowl with cover
Label Text
Even as a bachelor, George Washington acquired choice furnishings which bespoke his gentility and position in Virginia society. In 1757, Washington received from London a "Compleat sett Fine Image China," which included this sugar bowl. Washington drew on credit earned from his tobacco shipments to England to purchase commodities from elsewhere in the British Empire, including tea, Chinese porcelain, and sugar. By the mid-eighteenth century, the British considered sugar an indispensable accompaniment to their tea. Served in this fashionably decorated bowl, it completed the assemblage of luxury goods that asserted Washington's position as a member of the Virginia gentry.
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Datec. 1755
Geography
Made -
China
Medium/TechniquePorcelain (hard-paste), enamel, gilt
DimensionsOverall: 4 5/8 in. x 2 7/16 in. (11.76 cm x 6.2 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/C
DescriptionCircular, thrown bowl with two shell handles and straight sides rounded at bottom on a high, circular foot; low domed cover with flattened ball finial; bowl decorated on two sides with overglaze polychrome enamel (famille rose) vignettes; on one side a Chinese man and woman stand in a garden near a building; in the continuation of the scene in the other reserve, one child lays on the ground while another stands next to a woman seated on a bench and holding a pink fan, with a lake in the background; both vignettes are framed by underglaze blue flowers and scrollwork; the sides of the bowl below the handles are decorated with additional reserves with lakeside scenes in overglaze red enamel framed by underglaze blue flowers and scrollwork; shell handles picked out in underglaze blue enamel; cover is decorated with two reserves in overglaze polychrome enamels featuring a bird amid brush and rocks, framed by underglaze blue flowers and scrollwork; rims 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), 29.
Detweiler, Susan Gray, "The Ceramics," Antiques 135, no. 2 (February 1989): 498.
Detweiler, Susan Gray. George Washington's Chinaware (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1982), 24, 30-34.
Mount Vernon Ladies Association. The Mount Vernon China (Mount Vernon, VA: Mount Vernon Ladies Association, 1949), 39.
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