Cup and Saucer
- 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, Making Art: Centennial Era, 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
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.
This text refers to these objects: 68.87.29a-b; 68.87.30a-b; 68.87.31; 68.87.32a-b
FAQ


JoannaLundberg
luluinnyc
spiceytaco
paul
Eastern Parkway/Brooklyn Museum