A miniature or ‘toy’ teapot decorated by a distinctive hand that we first identified as Dutch and christened ‘The Fine Line Painter’ in a paper entitled ‘Dutch ‘Fine-Line’ and German Schwarzlot Decoration’ in the Transactions of the Oriental Ceramic Society in 2000, published to coincide with the exhibition held at the British Museum on the subject of Oriental porcelain decorated in Europe. [1]
The ‘Fine-Line’ painter was by far the most accomplished decorator of porcelain working in The Netherlands with a uniquely inventive and draughtsman-like style. Examples of the work of this rare artist can be found in various Dutch museums and a notable group in the Porzellansammlung in the Zwinger in Dresden where they have been from the early 18th century.
We are able to date this small group to around 1724 because of a ewer made for the marriage in that year of William Butler and Maria Leeser in Amsterdam from the Watney collection illustrated in the above-mentioned article.
A teapot of this size is likely to have been made for a child, to teach them the intricacies of etiquette that they would need to know as an adult.
Richard Pardue, in his study on Ceramics for Children, 1650-1835, notes:
“Seventeenth-century Dutch and eighteenth-century British and American parents wanted their children to prosper and be refined members of polite society. The tea wares and other small-scale ceramics presented in the chapters that follow may have been used for casual play by the young or curiosities for adult amusement, but when viewed through the lens of material culture, they also served as a means through which parents taught their children to succeed in an adult world and carry themselves with proper refinement in polite society.”[2]
William Hogarth (1697 – 1764), A Children’s Tea Party; Amgueddfa Cymru — Museum Wales, NMW A 94
William Hogarth depicts a child’s tea party presided over by three sisters with their doll in which their spaniel upsets the table sending the tea service crashing to the ground.
detail
Provenance:
The Arlette and Antony Emden collection, France
References:
Pardue 2008
Rick Pardue, Ceramics for Children, 1650 – 1835, (The Toy Museum at Old Salem, 2008)
Manners 2001
Errol Manners, ‘Dutch ‘Fine-Line’ and German Schwarzlot Decoration’, Transactions of the Oriental Ceramic Society, vol. 65, 2000-2001
[1] Manners 2001, pp. 135 – 142.
[2] Pardue 2008, p. xx.
Price: £7,500
