Modeled as a family in western dress seated between a small table, in front of a cross, and a food dish, the family formally arranged with a pet dog and monkey seated either side of a potted plant.
Modeled as a family in western dress seated between a small table, in front of a cross, and a food dish, the family formally arranged with a pet dog and monkey seated either side of a potted plant.
One identical group is in the collection of the Peabody Essex Museum and is published by William R. Sargent in
Two others groups were in the collection of Auguste le Fort (inventory N 30), inventory PO 8597, PO 3244.
A group in the collection of the British Museum (1930.7-28.566) and another in the Victoria and Albert Museum (C.c.108-1963); a further example is illustrated by P.J. Donnelly in Blanc de Chine, pl. P117a.
Another group is illustrated by Rose Kerr and John Ayers in Blanc de Chine Porcelain from Dehua, A catalogue of the Hickley Collection, Singapore, no. 38
See also Geffrey A. Godden, Oriental Export Market Porcelain and its Influence on European Wares, London: Granada Publishing, 1979.
See also Ernst, Zimmermann, Chinesisches Porzellan und die übrigen keramischen Erzeugnisse Chinas, 1923, vol. 2, Tafeln. 2nd Ed. Leipzig: Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1923.
At the end of the seventeenth century, the pressure of market demands swiftly changed the repertoire of the Dehua potters, and they have responded by producing single figures and various groupings that combined multiple elements. To allow single figures or groupings to be created, a two-piece press mold was used to form each figure. While undoubtedly intended to represent a proper family, the children are dressed as adults. Therefore, the potters for this group are likely to have followed the traditional Chinese conceit of depicting attendant as smaller adults.
This family group exists in two models, which vary principally according to the objects in their tables. This type includes a bowl with food or fish, while the other form has a game board and cups for dice or game chips.
Such groups were listed in one manifest of the Dashwood, a British East India Company ship loaded in Amoy in the Winter of 1701. When sold in London in 1703, the goods were listed as “Dutch families”.
Similar group also appear in the Johanneum inventory of 1721, where they are identified as “Four Indians standing at a table beside dog and a monkey”. The same group seems to be described in the 1724 inventory of Philippe d’Orléans (1674-1723), as “un petit festin de porcelain blanche”.
While English shipping records refer to this groups specifically as “Dutch” families, Christiaan Jörg has suggested that they were generic Westerns, possibly modeled after Chinese prints of merchants and their families rather than from Western prints. and that the commonly accepted description of themas Dutch refers more to a fact that the Dutch were their frequent exporters thought Batavia.
Those groups have erroneously been called “Governor Duff group” in reference to Duivver, the Governor of the Dutch East India Company, who was in office during the period 1729-1731.
If you would like to be among the first to be notified of our new items, send us your email address
© All rights reserved
