Covered sugar box
(1735-1740)
Medium
porcelain (soft-paste)
Measurements
9.3 × 9.8 cm diameter
Credit Line
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Patricia Begg OAM Bequest, 2024
Gallery location
17th & 18th Century Decorative Arts & Paintings Gallery
Level 2, NGV International
About this work
This sugar box and the adjacent plate and vase are all decorated with the so-called ‘double quail’ pattern. Quails are valued in China and Japan for their fierceness and courage but they are also symbols of peace, and two quails depicted together symbolise marriage. This sugar box has been coated with a white tin glaze, a glaze normally employed on earthenware but used by the Chantilly manufactory to emulate the milky-white (nigoshide) body of Japanese Kakiemon porcelain.