This is a beautiful and very rare coffeecup made in China in the 18th Century. It has a Yongzheng mark on the underside (1723-1735), however, the scrolled handle points to a slightly later date, possibly the Qianlong period between ca 1760 and 1780.
The cup is potted in sturdy greyish porcelain with a characteristically scrolled cup handle, which the Worcester factory in Britain imitated - or was it the other way arond? The cup is decorated in a chaotic design that contains many treasures: a finely underglaze blue outline of large insects, with a busy overglaze red design of foliage and flowers. On top of this, the insects are picked out in gilt, and several open spaces are filled with gilt cloud formations. At first sight it all looks a bit chaotic, but have a close look at the insects: they are beautiful.
The cup has a Yongzheng mark on the bottom, which I believe to be an imitation mark from a few decades later (but prove me wrong!).
CONDITION REPORT The cup is still looking bright but has several flaws: a large part of the foot rim has been broken off and there are two cracks down the wall, which you can see at 8 o'clock and 12 o'clock in the image of the inside. The cup stands stable in spite of missing part of its foot rim, and this flaw could be easily repaired by a specialist (if you like, we can arrange this for you at cost).
Antique porcelain is never perfect. Everything was handwork and kilns were fired on wood or coal, creating a lot of dust and other particles that could get baked into the porcelain by accident. Due to the shrinkage in the kiln, items can have small firing lines, which should not be seen as damage but as an imperfection of the time of production. I will reflect any damage, repairs, obvious stress marks, crazing or heavy wear in the item description but some minor scratches, nicks, stains and gilt disintegration can be normal for vintage items and need to be taken into account.
There is widespread confusion on the internet about the difference between chips and nicks, or hairlines and cracks. I will reflect any damage as truthfully as I can, i.e. a nick is a tiny bit of damage smaller than 1mm and a chip is something you can easily see with the eye; a glazing line is a break in the glazing only; hairline is extremely tight and/or superficial and not picked up by the finger; and a crack is obvious both to the eye and the finger. Etcetera - I try to be as accurate as I can and please feel free to ask questions or request more detailed pictures.
DIMENSIONS: cup diameter 6.1cm (2.4")
