37.
A ‘BLUE AND WHITE’ MUSTARD POT
Ming dynasty, Chongzhen period, circa 1643
11 cm high
Provenance: Naples, Villa della Floridiana, Museo Duca di Martina, Placido de Sangro (1829-1891) collection.
inv. n. 3463.
Mustard was an additive usually used on European table, often offered to the diner companions in pots like this that were explicitly realized in Jingdezhen from 1635 onward to be exported, faithfully reproducing Dutch tin, pewter and ceramic models (T. Canepa, Silk, Porcelain and Lacquer. China and Japan and their Trade with Western Europe and the New World 1500-1644, London 2016, pp. 308-309). Thousands of pots of similar shape were realized during the seventeenth century, also in Japan.
‘Blue and white’ porcelain mustard pots very similar to this were in the Hatcher Cargo, wrecked in 1643 and salvaged by Captain Michael Hatcher in 1983 (C. Sheaf – R. Kilburn, The Hatcher Porcelain Cargoes. The Complete Record, Oxford 1988, p. 71, n. 110).
A similar item, embellished with a European silver mount, was in the collection of Michael Butler (Seventeenth Century Jingdezhen Porcelain from the Shanghai Museum and the Butler collection, exhibition catalogue edited by M. Butler and W. Qingzheng, London 2006, n. 120); see also the comparable pot published by Howard (D.S. Howard, The Choice of the Private Trader, the Private Market. Chinese Export Porcelain illustrated from the Hodroff Collection, London 1994, p. 129, n. 132) and the one in the Princesshof Museum, Leeuwarden, also with a European metal mount (inv. NO 00017).
