Aguamanil and jofaina. Rose family. Qing Dynasty

Bottle (ewer with lid) and basin. Rose family. Qing Dynasty, late nineteenth-early twentieth century.
Hand-painted ceramic.
With mark ("China") on the reverse.
It shows marks of use and wear. Restorations on the stopper.
Measurements: 40 x 36 x 36 cm (bottle); 21 x 21 x 21 x 21 cm (basin).

Set of basin and ewer of hand-painted ceramic, Qing period. It follows the style of the Rose Family, characterized by the use of opaque white glaze and the predominance of light and very bright shades, especially pink and green. The basin has been decorated with lobed medallions on the eaves and vignettes on the seat, where folkloric and palatial scenes alternate with floral designs and birds of paradise. Similar motifs run along the globular body of the ewer with lid.

The Canton Rose Family is a style typical of ceramics exported to Europe, developed mainly during the second half of the 19th century. It is an ornate and very ornamental style, usually decorated with figurative scenes, and mainly characterized by the use of a wider palette than the normal Rose Family, dominated by light and bright shades, mainly pinks and greens. Thanks to the discovery of white glaze at the end of the Kangxi period (first half of the 18th century), Chinese potters expanded the palette, achieving new tonal ranges that would allow them to conform more to European tastes, even achieving gradations of color. In addition, as we see here, these pieces are often enriched with gilded details, very much to Western taste. Within the Rose Family there are three styles: rose medallion, nonya or straits. There is also the Mandarin style, which emerged in 1820, and is characterized by its decorations with typically Chinese figures, dressed in the traditional manner, set in domestic or courtly environments captured with detail and narrative. The pictorial decoration is organized in cartouches, on a dense background of flowers and insects, typical of 19th century Chinese export porcelain. There are also cartouches with compositions of flowers and insects on a white background.