
Anna Burnside
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Sold for £960 inc. premium
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This type of small cup is often called a 'capuchin' and is one of six English shapes found in Chinese blanc de chine porcelain from Dehua specially commissioned by merchants of the English East India Company. It represents some of the earliest English decoration on white porcelain, see Errol Manners, 'The English Decoration of Oriental Porcelain', ECC Trans, Vol.19, Pt.1 (2005), where an identical cup from the Helen Espir Collection is illustrated in fig.21. The same cup is reproduced by Helen Espir, European Decoration on Oriental Porcelain: 1700-1830 (2005), p.212, fig.11, where the author notes that the source for the Japanese figures was Atlas Japannensis by A Montanus, most likely from the 1670 English translation by John Ogilvy, see p.142, fig.40. A closely related covered jug is illustrated by John Sandon, British Porcelain (2009), p.8.