When I look at these teapots, I see beauty, whimsy, creativity.
What I cannot see, however, is when they were made.
And their vastly different interpretations of teapot form don’t help. We can assume they were all made by twenty-first-century artists (correctly in this case), but assumptions are not entirely reliable.
So, too, with those first teapots that were brought from China into Europe. The Chinese were still experimenting, trying to interpret just what it was that the Europeans wanted in a teapot. Further, only the wealthy could afford these luxury items, so there was no need to standardize them for mass production yet.
With myriad teapot designs as a result, researchers have needed to use a multi-prong approach to determine when these early teapots were made, and also to trace how designs evolved. Technique, glaze, colors, design, decoration, size, et cetera are the expected ways to tackle such studies.
But there are some other—perhaps more fun—tactics, something I hadn’t really thought much about until meeting up with Shirley Mueller, who studies early export porcelain and who pointed out several such instances.
One piece of art can be dated by using another piece of art—especially when we know when that second artwork was created. And museums are filled with these cross references!
Take, for example, this painting by Dutch master Willem Kalf.
- Because we know when Kalf lived and the year that he painted this still life, we know that this porcelain jar was made before he painted it (that is, before 1669).
- Further, we know that at this time period, Kalf was meeting “the demands of the well-to-do Dutch merchant class” by depicting luxury items such as the costly and imported items here (Bauer and Prater 1006).
This painting, then, places the Chinese porcelain piece into at least an approximate time period and into context. In the 1600s, porcelain, including teapots—along with tea—was available only to the upper classes.
Another interesting method of dating objects uses shipwrecks. And who doesn’t find a shipwreck totally intriguing? More on that coming soon!
Notes: (1) Teapot photos used with permission of the artists; these teapots were at the 2017 Ann Arbor Art Fair, and with the exception of Ed Brownlee, the artists can be contacted through their websites, as given in the photo captions. (2) Image of Kalf painting courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, in the pubic domain; painting currently at the Indianapolis Museum of Art.
–Bauer, H. and A. Prater. Baroque, Taschen, Los Angeles, 2006.
–Mueller, S. M. Elegance from the East: New Insights from Old Porcelain, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana. May 26–October 22, 2017. Tap here for more information about the exhibit, which is ongoing.
–Mueller, S. M. Personal communication, June 2017.