Tea bowl

Made in Meissen, the centre of porcelain production near Dresden, this tea bowl demonstrates the popularity of Dehua porcelain in Europe during the first half of the eighteenth century. Like Chinese porcelain, Meissen ware is hard-paste porcelain, which more closely duplicates the glassy surface of blanc de Chine than earlier European soft-paste porcelain, which was made with different materials and fired at lower temperatures. The moulded prunus branches on the tea bowl were a popular Dehua motif widely emulated on Western porcelain. Motifs were sometimes altered as they were taken up in the West; the vegetation on the saucer more closely resembles grape vines.