Bowl
Label Text
This Chinese export porcelain bowl is part of an extensive dinner service which likely belonged to Mary Anna Randolph Custis Lee, great-granddaughter of Martha Washington and wife of General Robert E. Lee. It features the “Canton” landscape, the most common pattern on blue-and-white porcelain shipped to America in the nineteenth century. By the time this bowl was deposited with the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association in 1935, the Lee family porcelains and the Washington-owned pieces they inherited had become commingled and had lost their identities.
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Date1830-1870
Geography
Made -
China
Medium/TechniquePorcelain (hard-paste)
DimensionsOverall (H x W x D): 2 1/8 in. x 8 3/4 in. x 8 3/4 in. (5.4 cm x 22.23 cm x 22.23 cm)
Credit LinePurchase, 2005
Object numberW-2786/B
DescriptionCircular bowl with a scalloped rim and rounded sides on a shallow foot ring, decorated in underglaze cobalt blue. Centered in the well is a right-anchored landscape with a pavilion complex, willow tree, and the fronds of a branch emerging at right. A single-masted ship appears in the river just below center and there is a flat-top bridge in the foreground at bottom. The sides of the well feature a network or trellis border. The rim has an outer narrow band of hatched lines on a blue ground, a wider central starred blue band, and an inner “rain and cloud” border of diagonal dashes and a scalloped line. The bowl’s exterior is decorated with three floral sprigs.
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