Saucer

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 tea in the "Compleat sett Fine Image China" that he received in 1757. Throughout the first half of the eighteenth century, Europeans preferred to take their tea in the Chinese fashion, sipping out of bowls rather than handled cups. Saucers, a European invention, held the hot bowl and provided a place for resting spoons.

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Datec. 1755

Geography Made - China

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

DimensionsOverall: 1 1/4 in. x 5 5/8 in. (3.18 cm x 14.3 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/F

DescriptionCircular saucer with rounded sides on a high, circular foot; center of well is decorated with overglaze polychrome enamel (famille rose) vignette of a Chinese man and woman 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; the rim is decorated with alternating panels of underglaze blue flowers and overglaze red enamel lakeside scenes and overglaze polychrome enamel birds amid brush and rocks, each framed by underglaze blue scrollwork; rims and ground between scrollwork picked out in gilt; exterior undecorated.
Published ReferencesCadou, Carol Borchert. The George Washington Collection: Fine and Decorative Arts at Mount Vernon (New York: Hudson Hills Press, 2006), p. 29.

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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