Object Details
Object Essay
The American market for imported ceramics was dominated in the late 18th century by wares from China, England, and France; it is rare to find exceptions. One of them is this Swedish faience tea-table tray. A peculiarly Scandinavian form, the faience tray provided a table with a colorful, engaging, and waterproof surface from which to serve tea—at the time at best a messy beverage requiring hot water and yielding water-soaked tea leaves.
Scandinavia’s production of tea-table trays increased from 1740 to 1790 with the rise in popularity of the tea ceremony. Decoration followed the fashionable styles of these years: early rococo fantasies of flowers or chinoiserie figures were followed in time with neoclassical views such as the one seen in this example. The Collection’s tray was probably made in Sweden at Rörstrand or Marieberg, near Stockholm. In the 1760s, these two faience factories were in close competition. During the 1770s, though, the production of faience declined dramatically as the demand for creamware (developed in England but imitated across Europe) increased. In 1782, Rörstrand bought the Marieberg works, where porcelain and creamware were made alongside faience, and, in 1788, consolidated all production at the original Rörstrand works. By 1798, Rörstrand had ceased to make faience.1 Lindgren, passim.
The tray is set in a table made in eastern Massachusetts and closely resembles a “mohogany fram’d Table cover’d with China” that belonged to John Tittle, a Beverly, Massachusetts, ship captain during the late 18th century.2John Tittle, Inventory, taken February 5, 1801, Docket 27748, Essex County Probate Records, Essex County Courthouse, Salem, Massachusetts. The Tittle table, now at Winterthur, displays the same unusual wedge-shaped legs with rounded front corners, pierced triangular knee brackets, and ceramic tray top.3Captain Tittle’s table is the subject of Goyne 1968, 804–6. In pink on a white ground, the painting on the tray depicts a harbor with classical ruins. On each example, two medial braces flanked by rows of small pine blocks support the tray.
Undoubtedly, both trays arrived in the same shipment, probably aboard a vessel captained by Tittle. The captain kept one for himself; a friend or relative may well have acquired the other. Unfortunately his identity is unknown; the earliest record of the Collection’s table occurs in the late 19th century when it belonged to Augustus Flagg of Boston.
Clearly, Tittle and the original owner of the Collection’s tray commissioned frames from the same cabinetmaker, a skilled artisan presumably from Beverly or neighboring Salem, who created a distinctive design suited to the special shape of the trays. Simply rounded corners on the frames and legs echo the tray’s curves and provide an effective balance to its ornate patterns. The Collection’s polychrome example, however, has a slightly more elaborate table, with an added tier of piercings in the fretwork and large, original, brass carrying handles on the end rails.
Bert R. Denker, Ellen Paul Denker, and Brock Jobe
Excerpted from Clement E. Conger, et al. Treasures of State: Fine and Decorative Arts in the Diplomatic Reception Rooms of the U.S. Department of State. New York: H.N. Abrams, 1991.