Chinese Export Famille Rose Tea Bowl with Figures, Qianlong period, c. 1750-1770

A Chinese Export tea bowl featuring domestic scenes within two cartouches, one with a man calling on a woman, the second a pair of lovers in a garden, the space in between decorated with bamboo and flowers. The bamboo represents moral integrity, modesty and loyalty.

The finely potted bowl has fritting to the rim, kiln grit and some losses to the gilding, but not cracks or repairs. As is usual with Chinese export porcelain, it is unmarked.

Famille-rose refers to Chinese porcelain decorated with predominantly pink coloured enamel, made from colloidal gold. These colours were known to the Chinese as yangcai ("foreign colours") because they were first introduced from Europe around 1685. These enamels, primarily an opaque red, pink and white, became available to the Imperial factory from around 1710 and were used on private factory porcelain from the early 1720s.