Brooklyn Museum: Decorative Arts: Cup and Saucer

Cup and Saucer

The elegant form of this tea set is derived from eighteenth-century Rococo prototypes, but the amazing variety of flora and fauna that encrust it is typical of the creativity of nineteenth-century eclectic design. The finials on the teapot and sugar bowl, in the form of heads of an Asian male and black sugarcane picker, respectively, will strike many modern viewers as racist imagery, although the nineteenth-century consumer of such porcelain would have considered them benign and, along with the goat's head on the handle of the creamer, clever iconographic shorthand that symbolized the contents of each vessel.

Manufacturer: Union Porcelain Works, 1863-ca.1922
Designer: Karl L. H. Mueller, American, born Germany, 1820-1887
Medium: Porcelain
Place Manufactured: New York City, New York, USA
Dates: 1876
Dimensions: 2 3/8 x 5 x 5 in. (6 x 12.7 x 12.7 cm)
Markings: Painted in red on bottom over glaze: "U.P.W." with "S" below
Signature: no signature
Inscriptions: no inscriptions
Collections: Decorative Arts
Museum Location: This item is on view in American Identities: A New Look, 5th floor
Accession Number: 68.87.29a-b
Credit Line: Gift of Franklin Chace
Image: Group, 68.87.29a-b_68.87.30a-b_68.87.31_68.87.32a-b_SL1.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph

Catalogue Description: Cup and saucer, part of a tête-à-tête tea set (68.87.28-.32), hard paste porcelain, henna ground with all-over floral design, white panels with scenes of birds, animals and flowers. Condition: Good, conservation report on file

Collections: Decorative Arts: Cup and Saucer