Punch bowl

Status

Not on view

Label Text

This Chinese porcelain bowl is characteristic of the luxury wares exported to the British colonies in the mid-eighteenth century. Its elaborate decoration, depicting riverside scenes of Chinese merchants distributing goods, directly communicated its exotic origins. Its history as a christening bowl in the Dandridge family suggests it was originally used at "Chestnut Grove," in New Kent County, Virginia, the childhood home of Martha Dandridge Custis Washington.

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Datec. 1750

Geography Made - China

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

DimensionsOverall: 3 3/4 in. x 8 1/4 in. (9.53 cm x 20.96 cm)

Credit LineBequest of Dr. Stephen Bleeker Luce, Jr., 1962 Conservation courtesy of the E. Rhodes & Leona B. Carpenter Foundation

Object numberW-2405

DescriptionCircular porcelain bowl decorated with "famille rose" enamels on a high foot rim; center of the well is decorated with a central pink flower and foliage; an overglaze red and black enamel border in the "fishroe" pattern runs around the top of the interior of the bowl; on the exterior, two large reserves are decorated in overglaze polychrome enamels depicting scenes of Chinese men or merchants and several large packages and barrels in front of turreted buildings alongside a river with an extensive landscape in the background; between the large reserves are two panels, each of which is filled with a diaper pattern in red overglaze enamel surrounding a quatrefoil reserve decorated with a floral spray in overglaze polychrome enamels and three smaller, circular reserves filled with floral designs in red overglaze enamel; the edge of the bowl shows signs of gilding.
Published ReferencesLauren F. Winner, A Cheerful and Comfortable Faith: Anglican Religious Practice in the Elite Households of Eighteenth-Century Virginia (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), 34-35.

Mary V. Thompson, "In the Hands of a Good Providence": Religion in the Life of George Washington (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2008), 36.

MarkingsPainted on black enamel on the base of the bowl, inside the footrim are three illegible characters.

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