Enamel Tea Cup with Inner Blue-and-White Scrolling Flowers

This Enamel-Decorated Tea Cup with Inner Blue-and-White Scrolling Flowers is collaboratively crafted by Master Zhang Jian, a master artisan of Jingdezhen overglaze piled gold craftsmanship, together with several other master craftsmen.

Inner blue-and-white is one of the porcelain decoration techniques used in combination with enamel colour.

The exterior is decorated with enamel-decorated scrolling flower patterns, including scrolling peony, scrolling lotus and scrolling chrysanthemum. They are known as the “Flowers of Longevity” for their uninterrupted, end-to-end design. The scrolling lotus features gracefully twining branches and leaves, full of dynamism, with a gorgeous colour scheme, and the exterior is embellished with golden string patterns. Representing endless vitality for its continuous structure, the scrolling pattern is also called the Longevity Vine.

Scrolling flowers were already painted on celadon water vessels of the Southern Dynasties, and were widely used on porcelain wares in the Song, Yuan dynasties and later periods.

Besides its elaborate and exquisite painting, this Enamel-Decorated Tea Cup with Inner Blue-and-White Scrolling Flowers requires five separate kiln firings to complete, with the risk of damage in each firing.

In the Qing Dynasty, enamel porcelain was originally produced exclusively for the appreciation of emperors and empresses. Enamel is a special pigment made through artificial firing. Before the 6th year of the Yongzheng reign (1728), enamel materials relied on imports from Europe. After that period, the Imperial Workshop of the Qing Court successfully developed more than 20 kinds of enamel pigments, marking the pinnacle of ancient Chinese polychrome porcelain craftsmanship.