116.
A ‘BLUE AND WHITE’ BEAKER
Qing dynasty, Kangxi period, late 17th century
26,1 cm high
Provenance: Naples, Villa della Floridiana, Museo Duca di Martina, Placido de Sangro (1829-1891) collection.
inv. n. 4038.
Standing on a bell-shaped foot, the tall body moulded with dense vertical ribs, the main decoration consisting in a floral composition painted with a widespread use of hatching and dotting.
The shape of this beaker – originally with a domed cover, now missing – is inspired by seventeenth century Venetian and German glass containers, which already served as model for Delft ceramic items (C. Le Corbeiller, China Trade Porcelain: Patterns of Exchange, New York 1974, pp. 27-28, n. 9, for a very similar beaker in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York).
Commenting a beaker with similar shape but different decoration in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, Christiaan Jörg (C.J.A. Jörg, in collaboration with J. Van Campen, Chinese Ceramics in the Collection of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. The Ming and Qing Dynasties, London 1997, p. 116, n. 117) suggests that this kind of beaker – well represented among the porcelain salvaged from the Vung Tau, a ship wrecked around 1690 in the South China Sea with a cargo destined to Batavia and then to Holland – could be originally used to keep warm beverage such as chocolate; he also refers that vessels like this were described as ‘cigars beakers’ in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
