Straits Chinese Porcelain, Nonyaware

Rare Straits Chinese Green-Ground Altar Tray & Three Teacups Set

It is rare to find a complete and matching altar tray and teacup set. This very fine set was acquired from a descendant of a Penang Nonya (Straits Chinese). The set had belonged to her grandmother and was used on the household altar to serve small cups of tea to the ancestors. The descendant recalls a servant filling the cup with tea each day.

The tray is thickly potted. The interior base is decorated with a green ground with a central cartouche of a phoenix amid peonies against a pink ground. The interior sides are decorated with a Daoist symbols and red ribbons against a pink ground.

The teacups are delicately potted with scalloped edges that are almost translucent. The outsides are decorated with peony blooms against a green ground with rim borders of flowers and symbols against a pink ground.

The rim of the trays and rims of the teacups have been gilded.

The teacups are marked to the base with red marks for ‘Jin Tang Fu Ji’ (錦堂福記) – most likely a factor or retail mark.

The tray is unmarked, as is usually the case.

Few complete such sets have been published. One, a gift to Singapore’s Peranakan Museum from Tony Wee and Colin Holland, is illustrated in Ee

et al (2008, p. 31).

The set is in fine condition.

Such items were commissioned from China by wealthy Straits Chinese or

Baba and Nonya families in Singapore, Malacca and Penang in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Such porcelain was made to Straits Chinese tastes and invariably feature bright colours, auspicious phoenixes and peonies.