Of U-shaped form bowl, decorated in the famille rose palette, with on either side with a burning brazier with ram’s heads and feet and a curling snake between its three legs. The cup is flanked by two molded handles on each side, supported by a cylindrical stem and splaying foot, the tiered cover with a scroll knop studded with shells.
An identical loving cup is in the collection of the British Museum (Museum number Franks.624.a). See Krahl & Harrison-Hall, Ancient Chinese Trade Ceramics from the British Museum, 1994, p. 85.
For loving cup decorated with birds from the Hermitage Museum, see Chinese Export Art in The Hermitage Museum, late 16th-19th centuries, St Petersburg, 2003, p.64, pl.71.
Another of similar form, but bearing the arms of Le Mesurier quarterly which can be dated to circa 1780, is illustrated by D.S. Howard, Chinese Armorial Porcelain, London, 1978, p.628, formerly in the Mottahedeh Collection.
For another example, with an unusual decoration of Ribbon-tailed bird (shoudainiao), see Cohen & Cohen with William Motley, Ladies First or There’s nothing like a dame!, p. 68, no. 43.
Loving cups were used during banquets and other celebratory gatherings for communal drinking. Their form most likely derived from European repoussé silverwork, and all the published Chinese porcelain versions of this form appear to be modeled with almost identical gadrooning and moulding, including the shape of the finial on the cover.
Judging from the various examples bearing crests and coat-of-arms, which can be dated fairly precisely, it would appear that loving cups were particularly popular in Europe during the last two or three decades of the eighteenth century.
The form of the brazier depicted on this cup originates in classical antiquity.
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