33.
A ‘BLUE AND WHITE’ TANKARD WITH SILVER MOUNT
the tankard Ming dynasty, Chongzhen period, circa 1635-1644; the mount European, mid 17th century
22,5 cm high
Provenance: Naples, Villa della Floridiana, Museo Duca di Martina, Placido de Sangro (1829-1891) collection.
inv. n. 3454.
The shape of this tankard, directly derived from similar German stoneware containers (schnelle), became very popular in Holland from the early seventeenth century (see T. Canepa, Silk, Porcelain and Lacquer. China and Japan and their Trade with Western Europe and the New World 1500-1644, London 2016, p. 303, figg. III.218-III.219, for a comparison between a Chinese ‘blue and white’ tankard in the Groninger Museum and a German stoneware model in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). It is in fact known that the Dutch East India Company (VOC) sent in 1635 from Köln a group of these European tankards to Jingdezhen to serve as model (Seventeenth Century Jingdezhen Porcelain from the Shanghai Museum and the Butler collection, exhibition catalogue edited by M. Butler and W. Qingzheng, London 2006, n. 121, for a similar tankard in the Butler collection). Most of the pieces in this group of export porcelain shows a decoration of figures in the landscape. Often these scenes are inspired from literary works, and this could be also the case of the tankard here discussed, where an official with an attendant holding a big ceremonial fan meets a farmer amidst plants, trees and rocks.
Usually, tankards of this type have a small hole on the upper section of the handle conceived to fit a European metal cover, in this example embellished by a moulded decoration of Bacchus supported by satyrs. Its shape and the style of its decoration suggest a date around the mid seventeenth century.
Frans Ryckhals (1609-1647), Still Life, 1640. Budapest, Museum of Fine Arts.
A similar container with a comparable metal cover is depicted in a still-life by Frans Ryckhals (1609-1647), dated to 1640 and now in the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest (inv. 265).
A tankard with an analogous decorative scheme is in the Hamburg Museum: it has a metal mount dated to 1642 (J. Harrison-Hall, Catalogue of the Late Yuan and Ming Ceramics in the British Museum, London 2001, pp. 358-359, nn. 12:11 and 12:12, discussing two items of this type in the British Museum, London).
The similar tankard with a metal mount with the incised coat of arms of Henrik Bielke (1615-1683), now in the Aaalborg Historical Museum, was probably a gift on the occasion of his marriage in 1649 (T. Clemmensen – M.B. Mackeprang, Kina og Danmark 1600-1950. Kinafart og Kinamode, Copenaghen 1980, pp. 40-41, figg. 15-16).
