Painted in the famille rose palette, with stepped rim and wavy edge. In a furnished interior a group of boys are shown at play wearing mandarin’s robes and hats, some drinking, and one in the foreground with a long sword or pikestaff. The patterned borders are in gold, red and black.
For an identical cup and saucer, see Sotheby’s New York, Mottaheded Collection, 30 january 1985, lot 104 (exhibited at the Virginia Museum in 1981/1982).
David Howard et John Ayers, China for the West, I, pp. 180 et 181, no. 177.
This cup and saucer is one of the more sophisticated cup shapes, based usually on European forms, which gradually superseded the simple tea-bowl from circa 1750. Together with the Chinese interiors designs, it was possibly taken from Worcester porcelain.
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