Printed from Woolley & Wallis

Description

Two Chinese porcelain English-decorated coffee cups and a teabowl 18th century, one coffee cup over-decorated in red monochrome with figures in a European landscape, the teabowl with a similar green and black camaïeu landscape scene, the other coffee cup simply gilded with floral garlands, and an ovoid tea canister with roses and climbing flowers in red, black and gilt, 10.3cm max. (4)

Provenance: the Helen Espir Collection, nos. 700, 867, 948 and 953.

Illustrated: Stephen Hanscombe, The Early James Giles and his Contemporary London Decorators, p.127, no.136, for the coffee cup, p.127, no.38 for the teabowl.

Several names have been put forward as the suggested decorator of the red landscape, including Jeffreyes Hammet O'Neale. It is likely that the decoration of both this and the green teabowl was carried out at the Giles atelier. Likewise the gilded coffee cup appears to be the work of that atelier, cf. Stephen Hanscombe, James Giles, China and Glass Painter, no. 99 for a chocolate cup and stand in a very similar design. The decoration of all four pieces in this lot dates to the 1770s, and is very different in style to the more Orient-based designs of the first part of the century.