Collections: Decorative Arts: Sugar Bowl and Cover

09:30 01/09/2009

This item is the subject of a short paper that I plan to expand: "Triangulation in a Tea Pot: The Body, Race, and Labor in Karl L. H. Müller’s Tête-à-Tête Tea Service." Recommend visitors to "American Identities" check out Müller’s Century Vase as well as other Union Porcelain Works items in the open storage area.

posted by cjceglio

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Sugar Bowl and Cover

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

• 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: ca. 1876
• Dimensions: Height: 4 1/2 in. (11.4 cm) Diameter of base: 2 3/4 in. (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: 68.87.30a-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
Union Porcelain Works (1863-ca.1922). Sugar Bowl and Cover, ca. 1876. Porcelain, Height: 4 1/2 in. (11.4 cm) Diameter of base: 2 3/4 in. (7 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Franklin Chace, 68.87.30a-b (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 68.87.29a-b_68.87.30a-b_68.87.31_68.87.32a-b_SL1.jpg)
• Catalogue Description: Sugar bowl and cover, part of tête-à-tête tea set (68.87.28-.32), hard paste porcelain. Henna ground with floral design, two white panels with flowers and butterflies, supported by four white rabbit feet, two handles composed of white doves resting on a pitcher plant. The top knob is in the shape of an African-American boy's head. Condition: Good