334.
A ‘BLANC DE CHINE’ MUG WITH SILVER MOUNT
the mug Qing dynasty, Kangxi period, late 17th century; the mount probably Dutch, first half of the 18th century
16 cm high
Provenance: Naples, Villa della Floridiana, Museo Duca di Martina, Placido de Sangro (1829-1891) collection.
inv. n. 3674.
The shape of this mug is clearly inspired by European stoneware containers. The model could be identified with the vessels made from 1673 by the English ceramist John Dwight from Fulham, who was in turn inspired by similar German pieces made in Siegburg – the main Renish centre of stoneware production together with Cologne – already from the sixteenth century. Siegburg stoneware and Dwight’s ceramics often present a raised decoration, usually of floral subject. Dehua porcelain also had in its repertory moulded motifs, already from the mid seventeenth century, as seen in the mug here discussed, and it is not therefore impossible the existence of mutual influences between the Chinese kilns and the European manufactures, considering the documented arrival of German stoneware in both China and Japan toward the mid seventeenth century and the contemporary success of ‘blanc de Chine’ porcelain in Europe (C. Le Corbeiller, China Trade Porcelain: Patterns of Exchange, New York 1974, pp. 22-23, n. 6, for a Dehua mug of similar shape in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York).
For a Dehua mug of comparable shape with an European metal mount from The Koger Collection in the John Ringling Museum of Art, the State Art Museum of Florida (inv. 25.123), see J. Ayers, Blanc de Chine. Divine Images in Porcelain, New York 2002, n. 64.
