bowl
- Museum number
- Franks.59
- Description
-
Chinese porcelain bowl, carved in Europe. The bowl has a monochrome aubergine glaze. Decorated with a wheel-engraved design of a bird with fruiting and flowering plants and ribbon bows, which have been carved through the glaze to reveal the white porcelain body. While the bowl was made at Jingdezhen in Jiangxi province, the carved decoration was added in Europe. Such decoration was popular in the 18th century and the British Museum has similarly decorated brown and blue-glazed cups and saucers.
- Production date
-
1700-1722 (circa)
-
1720 (decoration)
- Dimensions
-
Diameter: 17.30 centimetres
-
Height: 7.80 centimetres
- Curator's comments
-
Compare with BM Franks. 276.
-
Harrison-Hall and Krahl 1994:
It has been suggested that the decoration may have been executed at Dresden, Germany, early in the 18th century, by Tschirnhausen who also engraved red stonewares and glass vessels (Hobson, 1977 [1932], p. 107). The work is very skilful since porcelain- being very hard - is
extremely difficult to carve. Similarly decorated stoneware from Fulham, London, is also known.
-
This bowl was "wheel-engraved", a technique derived from glass engraving which is more often found on brown glazed wares. There is no ducumentary evidence as to where it was enfraved, though Dresden or somewhere in Saxony seems most likely.
Wheel engraving was a glass-decorating technique practised at glasshouses in Germany, including Dresden, Bohemia and Silesia in the 17th and 18th centuries. (Espir, 2005).
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
Exhibited:
1994, Taiwan, National Museum of History, Ancient Chinese Trade Ceramics
1995 27 Jan-26 Mar, London, BM, G91, East Meets West: Chinese Trade Ceramics in the British Museum
- Acquisition notes
- The Asian ceramics donated by Sir Augustus Wollaston Franks were recorded in a sequence on index cards (known as the ‘Franks Index Cards’), held in the Dept of Asia.
- Department
- Asia
- Registration number
- Franks.59
