Canton Enamel Twelve-Piece Sweetmeat Dish Set & Box

This set of twelve interlocking sweetmeat dishes is of Canton enamel, made in the 18th century for export to Europe and elsewhere in Asia. Remarkably, it retains in its original fitted, blue cotton fabric and cardboard tray and cover. The storage box follows the outline of the dish set with its scallop edging.

Each dish is decorated in famille-rose with a scene depicting either one or two sage or scholar-type figures pursuing scholarly pursuits such as the contemplation of nature and playing chess, attended to by a servant, against a cream ground. The dress and the presence of a servant conveys the sense of wealth and leisurely contemplation. One dish shows the drunken poet Li Bo, leaning against a wine jar that lies on its side.

Each dish sits on either three or four low feet. The exterior sides of each are decorated with a cracked-ice pattern, and the undersides with a floral spray.

Several of the dishes have losses to the enamel but this is relatively minor given the age and when compared with other examples.

 

Above: A related, though smaller example currently on display in the Hue Royal Antiquities Museum in the Long An Palace in Hue, Vietnam. The set belonged to emperors of the Nguyen dynasty, and is described as a ‘set of enamelled bronze (sic) plates for serving salad dishes in royal banquets’.