'Anatomy' saucer: C.1-2021

Titles

'Anatomy' saucer

Maker(s)

Maker: Unknown
Decorator: Pira, Pleun

Entities

• Saucer

Categories

• Porcelain

Description

Porcelain, decorated in overglaze grisaille, depicting a human torso opened to reveal the muscles, enclosed within a vine border.

Porcelain, decorated in overglaze grisaille, depicting a human torso opened to reveal the muscles, enclosed within a vine border.

Legal notes

Purchased using the Alan Green Fund, 2021.

Place(s) associated

• China ⪼ China
• Amsterdam ⪼ Holland

Acquisition and important dates

Method of acquisition: Bought (2021-05-10) by Jorge Welsh Works of Art Ltd

Dating

1750 - 1760

Note

This saucer is an example of the porcelain blanks shipped from China to the Dutch provinces to be decorated in grisaille or polychrome enamels by private painters, who either performed their work in ceramic factories in Delft, Rotterdam, Amsterdam and other Dutch towns, or fired the pieces at low temperature in private muffle kilns. This saucer is believed to be part of a unique tea service illustrated with anatomical drawings. The lid of the sugar basin of the service is inscribed ‘geschildert etn The servies van de Annatomi door Eleum Pira 1761’, giving the name of the painter as Pleun Pira (1734–99), son of Anthony Pira, a pottery decorator from Delft. Pleun Pira married in 1755 and became a citizen of Amsterdam in 1757, living and working as porcelain decorator in Roeterseiland, an industrial part of the city where there were plenty of small kilns. The sugar basin lid, a saucer illustrating the stomach, and a coffee cup with three views of a foetus in the womb are in the collection of the Winterthur Museum, Delaware. A cream jug painted with a skeleton and a coffee cup with a foetus are illustrated in 'Collecting Chinese Export Porcelain' (1978) and a spoon-tray showing trepanning was formerly in the Mottahedeh Collection. The anatomical drawings are believed to be after numerous engravings published in Holland between the 1500s and 1700s.