Bronze Age Gold from Wales

Tea bowl and saucer, hard-paste porcelain, creamy white paste, good translucency, slight green tinge to the glaze; the tea bowl with a high foot rim and spreading lip, the saucer dish-shaped, with a foot rim; the tea bowl painted on either side with a commedia del arte figure (one, Scaramouche, a masked man in a grey cap and coat, white ruff, violet doublet, and lilac hose, holding a lute, after an engraving published by Jean Mariette, Paris, 1696, and the other Mezzetin, a masked man in a violet cap,brown doublet, red apron and lilac breeches,from an engraving by Petrus Schenk after Jean Mariette) standing on a green ground shading to brown, and flanked by Indian flowers in red, yellow and green, white ground with flying insects, the foot gilt above three red concentric lines, the lip also gilt; the interior painted at the bottom in red with a circular reserve of Indian flowers and insects; the saucer painted within three concentric lines with Harlequin in a brown doublet and hose, patterned in red and black, holding a baton standing on a similar ground between Indian flowers, a spider's web to the left, and a peacock to the right, and with insects on the white ground, the rim gilt.

This tea bowl and saucer are painted with theatrical figures from the commedia dell'arte. They are probably part of a tea and coffee service attributed to Johann Gregorius Höroldt (1696-1775), master decorator at the Meissen factory.