Straits Chinese Plates

Two Unusual Straits Chinese Turquoise-Green Ground Saucers

This pair of saucers of plates was acquired in the UK from a Chinese lady who is descended from a Penang Straits Chinese family. The saucers had belonged to her grandmother.

They show, in polychrome enamel against a turquoise-green ground and within cartouches of olive-green ground, sprays of pink peonies. The rims have an olive-green ground and are decorated with delicate pink lotus blooms and Daoist symbols. The edges are scalloped and gilded. The undersides of the rims are decorated with pink lotus and peonies.

The saucers are marked in red enamel to the base with the Baoweidi Zao factory mark.

The pair are in excellent condition.

Saucers such as these were commissioned from China by wealthy Straits Chinese or Baba families in Singapore, Malacca and Penang in the nineteenth and early twentieth century as part of larger sets for wedding banquets. The sets were made to Straits Chinese tastes and invariably feature bright colours, phoenixes and peonies.

Ho, W.M., Straits Chinese Porcelain: A Collector’s Guide, Times Books International, 1983.

Kee, M.Y.,

Straits Chinese Porcelain, Kee Ming Yuet Sdn Bhd, 2004.

Kee, M.Y.,

Peranakan Chinese Porcelain: Vibrant Festive Ware of the Straits Chinese, Tuttle Publishing, 2009.

The Southeast Asian Ceramics Society – West Malaysia Chapter,

Nonya Ware and Kitchen Ch’ing, Oxford University Press, 1981

a family heirloom of a UK-based lady descended from a Penang Straits Chinese family.