Getty Museum

Mounted Lidded Bowl

Unknown

Date

porcelain about 1720; mounts about 1745–1749

Medium

Hard-paste porcelain; colored enamel decoration; gilt bronze mounts

Culture

Chinese (Kangxi)

Department

Decorative Arts

Institution

Getty Museum

A Parisian craftsman took two Chinese bowls, inverting one to create a lid, and set them with gilt bronze mounts to form a vessel for potpourri. Containers for potpourri first appeared in the 1700s in France, made from precious metals, porcelain, lacquer, or hardstones; recipes for their sweet-smelling contents were soon prevalent. The soft gray-green color of the glaze on this bowl is known as celadon. The name is probably a corruption of Saladin (Salah-ed-din), Sultan of Egypt, who sent forty pieces of ceramics decorated with this glaze to the Sultan of Damascus in 1171. Alternatively, some scholars think the name was taken from the gray-green costume of Céladon, a character in a French play of the 1600s.

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