Day 67 - Double teapot

July 7, 2018

Gallery 201 is devoted to the global trade in porcelain during the 17th and 18th centuries. It is fascinating to see the Chinese and Japanese ceramics and efforts to emulate them in England, France, Germany, and elsewhere. One plate I particularly like turns out to have been made in Italy!  Perhaps it's not surprising that I like it, because it combines a Chinese-inspired  blue and white surface with stylized flowers, made with a stencil, that, the caption tells me, reflect the Turkish ceramics from Iznik that I so admire.The caption says that it was made in the Doccia factory, although whether Doccia is a town or a ceramics works I cannot say. There's  a lovely Japanese teapot with a metal top; the latter was made and added here in the U.S.A. after the pot was imported. There's also a charming  Qing statuette of a boy playing a flute and riding a buffalo; the animal is depicted with wonderful verisimilitude. And there's another Qing figure of a European, clad in a black hat, red coat, green breeches, and yellow leggings, riding a lion. The lion, highly stylized, looks back at the European in a not particularly friendly way.

Today's object, which I chose because it is both beautiful and unusual (to me, anyway) is a double-spouted teapot, made in the Qing dynasty in the late 17th or early 18th century. The decoration on its body consists of several tiers of delicately painted peonies in lighter and darker shades of pink,  against a white ground; the peonies are arranged on top of each other, as if on trellises, and are divided by vertical bands. They are surrounded by green leaves and some kind of blue flower. The flowers are all different from each other, but their appearance is perfectly harmonious. The pot is incredibly refined -- and only about six inches tall! But I wonder: How much tea could it possibly hold? Not more than two small cups, I bet. And is it easy to pour without spilling?