A CHINESE BLUE AND WHITE MINIATURE TEAPOT AND COVER

The compressed globular body with, with a gently curving spout and a slender loop handle, decorated in shades of underglaze blue, each petal-shaped panel alternately painted with flowers and 'Long Elizas', the cover with a conical finial encircled by stylised petals within a spiral-work border, the base glazed, with a single yu 'jade' character mark.

Date:  Kangxi (1662-1722) 

Footnote: There is a group of three miniature blue and white teapots similarly decorated with ‘Long Elizas’ and with a ‘yu’ mark on the base in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum, New York, also dated to the Kangxi period (museum number 1975.1.1712, Robert Lehman Collection 1975). 
For a further Kangxi miniature teapot, also in blue and white and with 'Long Elizas' but of a different form, see the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (C.585-1910. Salting Bequest, 2009). They suggest that small teapots such as ours may have been more of a toy than a functioning teapot. Wealthy European women, especially in the Netherlands, furnished doll's houses with miniature versions of their own furnishings.
In the late 17^th and early 18^th centuries, miniature versions of Chinese blue-and-white porcelain forms were highly prized in Europe. These miniatures would be placed in ornate ‘porcelain cabinets’, alongside larger ceramics. An example of such a display can be viewed at the Gemeentemuseum, The Hague, where an elaborate 18^th century dollhouse contains its own miniature ‘porcelain room’.

The Yu, 'jade', character mark seen here on the base is traditionally called the F-mark in the Netherlands and is very common on good-quality blue and white Kangxi export porcelain, see Jörg, C.J.A. and J. van Campen, Chinese Ceramics in the Collection of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. The Ming and Qing Dynasties, p.115.

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This object is eligible for a Certificate of BADA Provenance

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