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Narrative

Together with Edz4325, gifts to donors in 1972 from a personal friend, the late Joanna Truran, who inherited a porcelain collection from her uncle, Colonel Man Stuart of Aberdeenshire, Scotland, former Aide-de-camp to General Charles Gordon or 'Chinese Gordon' in the Boxer Rebellion (c. 1900 C.E.).

History Of Use

Famille rose is a term which applies to a group of over-glaze enamelled porcelains of which the inclusion of a colour ranging from pink to a purplish rose is characteristic. The pigment is the European purple of cassius which was taken to China by Jesuit missionaries, c. 1685, appearing first on enamels on copper and then, by c. 1700, on porcelain (Savage and Newman, p. 115).

Description

A bowl with everted rim and foot ring. The exterior surface is decorated with four gilt bordered medallions with various landscape scenes against a blue enamel background of scrolled clouds and incised feather motifs. The medallions recount scenes from the legend of the spinning maid and the cowherd. One medallion depicts a female figure encircled by scrolling clouds standing on a bridge of magpies while another depicts a male figure encircled by scrolling clouds on a cow atop a bridge of magpies. The remaining two medallions each depict the couple within a garden scene of gazebo, trees, rocks and stars. The interior is painted in underglazed blue with the couple and cow within a garden scene in a central medallion. Scrolling clouds and birds decorate the side. Bottom of bowl has a hand painted six character seal in underglazed blue and two pieces of adhesives each with handwritten inked words and numbers. Seal mark is that of the Qing Dynasty, Tao Kuang reign.

Iconographic Meaning

The bowl depicts the legend of the cowherd and the spinning maid as related by the philosopher Huai Nan Zu. As a punishment, the gods of heaven had separated the cowherd and spinning maid as the heavenly couple was spending too much time with each other and refusing to work. Made to live on either side of the heavenly river forever, the king of heaven took pity on the dejected couple and allowed them an annual visit on the seventh day of the seventh moon when magpies hovering wing to wing formed a bridge over the river so the lovers could meet. Their copious tears at the time of separation is said to be the cause of the yearly heavy rains.