The pattern for this brilliantly colored eighteenth-century Chinese sugar bowl and cover was once thought to have been commissioned by Madame de Pompadour (1721-1764), the famous mistress of King Louis XV (reigned 1715-1774). The carp-like fish featured in cartouches throughout the design were considered a reference to her maiden name Poisson, meaning “fish” in French. However, without documentary evidence, it is unlikely that Madame de Pompadour, who had ascended to such a high status, would have drawn attention to her bourgeois family for such a boldly decorated table service.
In addition to the fish, the ornamentation includes whimsical foliage, lotus seed pods, peonies, and other flowering stems, all applied using opaque overglaze enamel colors featuring pink pigments, known in ceramics as the Famille rose color palette. Although the delicate pink enamel was already in use in parts of Europe, it first appeared in China during the early eighteenth century, likely introduced to Chinese artists through Jesuit missionaries. This particular sugar bowl and cover were probably commissioned by a wealthy French patron as part of a larger service. Such an order would have been facilitated by the French East India Company (Compagnie des Indes Orientales), which continued to import Chinese export ware until a new fashion for French-made porcelain emerged in the mid-1700s.
A highly prized commodity, sugar was a symbol of wealth and luxury. To meet demand, France, among other European nations, established plantations in places like the Caribbean where sugar cultivation relied on the brutal institution of slavery to maximize production.
This recent acquisition, which was presented as a gift by Richard Pardue, not only speaks to the dynamic interplay between international trade, culture, and artistic techniques in its form and decoration, but also to the social history of sugar, both its cultivation and its increasing use within French households during the eighteenth century.
Image credit:
Unidentified artist, Chinese, Sugar Bowl and Cover, c. 1745, porcelain, 6 1/2 × 4 7/8 in. (16.5 × 12.4 cm). Ackland Art Museum, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Gift of Richard Pardue, 2024.7ab. Photograph courtesy of Nicolas Fournery.
