Spoon rest or tray
China
1780-1820
Measurements
5/8 in x 4-3/4 in x 3-3/8 in
Materials
Underglaze blue decorated porcelain
Credit Line
Historic Odessa Foundation, gift of H. Rodney Sharp
Accession Number
1959.3700
Condition Notes
The gilding on the rim has almost entirely worn away.
Provenance
Ex coll. H. Rodney Sharp
Comments
This scalloped-oval dish has a flat-bottom and shallow sides for the convenient placement of spoons wet from stirring tea. Called a spoon rest or spoon tray, it is finely decorated in blue on the white porcelain ground with a gilded rim, only traces of which remain. The decoration is a landscape of Chinese buildings on the right, a bridge in the lower center, and boats and islands on the left. These same image components occur in Nanking porcelains of the 1820s and later, so-called because they were decorated in Nanking for the Western market. Like them, this tray has a finely detailed band of decoration around the inside sidewalls. But unlike them, this small tray does not display the degree of uniformity that those porcelains embody. This tray appears to predate Nanking work.
