Object of the Day, Museum Edition: A Porcelain Sugar Bowl and Cover, 1750-1760

Sugar Bowl
The Victoria & Albert Museum

Before the days of paper plates and fast food, a family could communicate a lot about their collective personalities, ideals and position through their choice of china. The best china was saved for guests, of course, and to have a matching set of exceptional china was considered a status symbol.
Very often, a tea service would be purchased that differed from the dinner china, but blended with it. China for tea could be more fanciful than the formal china of the dining room. Take this sugar bowl from a set by Charles Gouyn, for example.

This sugar bowl and cover of soft-paste porcelain is painted with enamels in a pattern of with sprays of roses, other flowers and insects around the ogee-shaped bowl. The cover is adorned with a wavy edge and surmounted with leaves and strawberries.

Such botanical decorations in bright colors were quite fashionable in the mid Eighteenth Century. This sugar bowl is one of the remaining pieces of an extraordinary tea set which was made in London between 1750 and 1760. It was donated to the Victoria & Albert Museum in 1969.