A very rare set of blue and white 'Tea Cultivation' dishes, Qianlong period, circa 1750

20 janvier 2018

A very rare set of blue and white 'Tea Cultivation' dishes, Qianlong period, circa 1750

Lot 103. A very rare set of blue and white 'Tea Cultivation' dishes, Qianlong period, circa 1750; 15 1/8 in. (38.5 cm.) diameter, the largest. Estimate USD 40,000 - USD 60,000. Price realised USD 150,000. © Christie's Images Ltd 2018

Painted with the various stages of tea cultivation within borders ofrocaillerie, numbered in underglaze blue to reverse, in various sizes.

Note: In the 1690s the Kangxi Emperor commissioned a work to portray significant Chinese industries, the Gengzhi tu, or Illustrations of Ploughing and Weaving. This album of woodblock prints outlining the stages of silk cultivation and rice production was then expanded by the Qianlong Emperor to include porcelain production.

Westerners were fascinated by these exotic Chinese industries. Both tea and silk were luxuries previously unknown in Europe, and tea, in particular, had become the driving commercial force of the China trade by the mid-18th century. Export artists created watercolor and gouache albums for their Western clientele delineating the stages of tea cultivation in highly idealized and romanticized views.

Vary rarely, these themes appeared as decoration on porcelain. One or two famille rose tea services were made depicting merchants in a tea warehouse; a single set of famille rose plates with the theme is known. Examples from the present series, with its exuberant rococo borders after Delft, are found in Dutch public collections, and it seems likely that the original commission was from a Dutch tea merchant. There are 23 subjects known in the series, each numbered but not in a logical order. The Chinese porcelain enamelers would of course not have been familiar with Arabic numerals on watercolors, but they certainly copied these flat art subjects onto round dishes masterfully.

Christie's. Chinese Export Art Featuring 100 lots from Marchant, est 1925, 18 January 2018, New York