Sold Ceramics - Sold Famille Rose wares 1725-1800 - Tea, Coffee and Chocolate wares - Page 3
Object 2012432
Saucer
China
1730-1740
Height 19 mm (0.74 inch), diameter of rim 103 mm (4.05 inch), diameter of footring 61 mm (2.40 inch), weight 39 grams (1.38 ounce (oz.))
Saucer on footring, slightly everted rim. Decorated in various famille rose enamels with in the centre and the foreground three spotted deer: one pink, one yellow, one white. They are prancing around in a Chinese landscape with many funghi growing on rocks. The white spotted deer is carrying a lingzhi in his mouth. In the background a mountainous landscape. The reverse is undecorated.
Between 1720 and 1730 the Chinese porcelain producers developed a new enamel colour, pink. It derived from colloidal gold. The technique was first used in China in the Imperial workshops in Beijing, for coloured glass and enamels on metal. It became very successful instantly and soon replaced famille verte. The term famille rose was first coined by the 19th-century French author Albert Jacquemart, who distinguished between specific groups in his descriptions of Oriental ceramics. (Jörg & Van Campen 1997)
The spotted deer design symbolises best wishes for a career as an official and good fortune and prosperity. This is because the Chinese word for deer, lu, has the same sound as the word for the high salary of a Chinese official. Another reason for the association with Chinese scholar-bureaucrats or literati is that one of the concluding rituals of the provincial examinations that had to be passed if one was to become an official in the Chinese civil service was a party known as the Banquet of Auspicious Omens, ore more literally the Deer-cry Banquet.
More frequently however, in Daoist mythology the spotted deer are considered auspicious animals connected to immortality. This is because they were believed to attain great age. Furthermore, they were the only animals able to locate and eat the special fungus of longevity, lingzhi. These special mushrooms were found on the paradise islands of Penglai. In Chinese mythology the Penglai mountain is often called the base of the Eight Immortals, or at least where they travelled to have a banquet. In Chinese art the spotted deer usually accompanies Shoulao or Magu, the God and Goddess of Longevity. Because of all this, even today the horns of deer have an important place in Chinese medicine and can be found in every Chinese apothecary shop. The soft internal part of the horns is dried, pulverised, and made up into pills. The inferior parts are boiled up into jelly or tincture.
The importance of spotted deer in Chinese culture today was also reflected in a gift by Taiwan to the Chinese mainland in 2011 of two rare sika or spotted deer for the Liugongdao National Forest Park in east China's Shandong Province. (GOV.cn Chinese Government's Official Web Portal). The sika deer is one of the very few deer species that does not lose its spots upon reaching maturity. Spot patterns vary with the region. The color of the pelage ranges from mahogany to black, and white individuals are also known.(source: wikipedia.org)
According to Bjaaland Welch, in Chinese legends the different colours of the deer signified the age: a 1000-year-old deer was depicted with grey fur, a white one, as can be seen on this saucer, stood for an impressive age of 5000 years.
Condition: A frit with a connected hairline to the rim and a restored hole in the centre.
References:
Jacquemart & Le Blant 1862, pp.77-105
Jörg & van Campen 1997, pp.205-207
Bartholomew 2006, p.102/164, also cat.5.7, 6.7, 6.7.5,7.16
Bjaaland Welch 2008, pp.116-118
Price: Sold.
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