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Kitty Calash

~ Confessions of a Known Bonnet-Wearer

Kitty Calash

Tag Archives: China trade

Things Won’t Make You Happy…

08 Saturday Nov 2014

Posted by kittycalash in History, Living History, personal

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

18th century, 19th century, China trade, Chinese export porcelain, collecting, Federal style, porcelain, tea party, tea pot

DSC_0455except when they do.

I try hard not to be acquisitive, though our home is perhaps more crowded than it might be if I were better at the task or cleaned at work less and at home more. Around the time of What Cheer Day, I became rather obsessed with teapots.

At the local antique mall, I found an attractive Chinese export porcelain cylinder or barrel-form teapot with crossed strap handles, suitable in design and shape for use in 1800 Providence. I made a special mid-week trip fully intending to buy the teapot and free poor Mr S from ever hearing “teapot” again in endless conversation. When the item was out of the case, though, it turned out to have a mended crack right across the bottom, and as I told the woman, “It matters because I intend to use this.”

DSC_0450In the end, I did not have my fabulous teapot for What Cheer Day. In fact, my fabulous teapot arrived just this past Thursday, after patient stalking on eBay. It arrived with a bonus of five cups and a saucer, most with mends, but the pot itself has just a handle flaw or mend (typical, and seen, along with wear, in some museum pieces, too). The quantity of cups suggests that the previous owner had a relationship with them not unlike the one you might develop with a large litter of kittens you were fostering…adopt one, get another! Just to get them out from underfoot.

DSC_0470The cups and pot reminded me of the difficult meals and teas Elizabeth Bennett takes with Maria Lucas and Lady Catherine whilst visiting Mr Collins and his new bride Charlotte Lucas. There’s a tension in these cups, some combination of the dainty and the strong, some slightly misshapen (not all makers were equally skilled) that calls to mind the polite verbal combat of tea parties.

I washed the cups, and was reminded of the duties of maids to clean and care for these delicate items, the kind of thing they were unlikely ever to acquire, though there were grades of china then as now: what sat on John Brown’s table was not what sat on the Dexter’s table, or at least not in the same quantity.

DSC_0452The quantities of china coming into Providence and the rest of the Eastern seaboard after 1788 were enormous: in 1797, dinner sets of 172 pieces could be ordered at Canton for $22, and included 6 dozen large flat plates, 2 dozen large soup plates, 2 dozen small dessert plates, 8 pudding dishes, 2 large tureens, dishes and tops, 2 smaller ditto, 16 dishes of various sizes, 6 sauce boats and stands, and 4 salt cellars. Tea and coffee sets of 81 pieces were bought in Canton for $6 to $9! Just for dinner and tea, you could have 253 pieces of china, and we haven’t even begun to get into custard cups, cache pots, and garnitures!

DSC_0473The indifferent pieces I have acquired may have started out as kaolin, feldspar and quartz in Ching-te-Chen, 200 miles west-southwest of Shanghai. There were important porcelain manufactories there, and porcelain wares traveled by road and boat to Canton, where sets were customized to meet specific orders and then loaded onto ships bound back to America, six months or so after the order was placed in Providence, Salem, or Boston. It’s a lot of work for a fashionable sip of Hyson or oolong, and no wonder cups and pots were mended, saved, and reused.

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Two Decades in…

01 Monday Sep 2014

Posted by kittycalash in History, personal, Thanks

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

antiques, China, China trade, consumer culture, exportware, history, mercantile trade, pottery, tureen

Tureen in the wild

Tureen in the wild

On Wednesday, Mr S and I will mark our twentieth wedding anniversary, and due to some unfortunate timing, one of us has a medical procedure scheduled for that day, so we won’t actually celebrate on the day itself. (In sickness and in health, you know…)

Instead, we went antiquing in New Bedford on Sunday, after Mr S spent Saturday clearing brush at Minute Man National Historic Park. New Bedford was a nice change from the places we usually go in Rhode Island, and I always enjoy looking in Massachusetts, because objects there are typically free of Rhode Island connections, which means I can actually make encumbrance-free purchases.

I don’t know how encumbrance-free this purchase was…for now we are encumbered with a large hard paste porcelain tureen decorated with cranes and a federal eagle.

The platter it sits on may not be its original platter, but do I care? No. Look at that fantastic, crazy thing. The face the Young Mr made when this was unwrapped in front of him was priceless, but he has long questioned my sanity; now he will question my aesthetics.

Pride of place, with a friend's painting and Mr B's hats

Pride of place, with a friend’s painting and hats by Mr B

It sits in pride of place on our mantle now, and as far as I can tell, it’s typical of the shape of tureens made for the American market ca. 1790-1810. I’ve not seen the cranes before, and I still haven’t found this pattern in a museum or auction house, though Winterthur’s tureen collection is pretty amazing.

If the thing is real (and it looks and feels like the real ones at work), its voyage has been  incredible: from China to a port in Massachusetts, down through time to a shelf in an old mill building, to my mantle.  Think of the person who ordered this– and the set it was likely part of– by letter, and then waited for months for the goods to arrive. Some sets were as large as 250 pieces, custom-monogrammed at the factory, and then packed into barrels and crates lined with straw and loaded onto ships bound back to the East Coast.

I’d love to know this piece’s story, but even without a provenance, the object itself is pretty astonishing, and fits into our already eclectic china (and yes, mantle business).  Now, for a soup party!

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