A set of six Chinese white porcelain (blanc de Chine) cups with Dutch enamelled designs. Each with straight sides tapering from the slightly flared rim to a low, octagonal foot. Painted round the sides in coloured enamel is a lady wearing traditional Japanese dress holding a flowering spray, beside a banded hedge with growing chrysanthemum and other autumn flowers; inside the lip, a scrolling border, and in the centre, a rosette. The bases of all except RCIN 58921.2 bear unidentifiable moulded seals.

The painted decoration, added in Holland in the early eighteenth century, is in the then fashionable ‘Kakiemon style’: that of high-quality Japanese porcelain wares produced in Arita from the late seventeenth to early eighteenth century, which were decorated principally using a palette of red, yellow, blue and green enamels on a white ground.

Text adapted from Chinese and Japanese Works of Art in the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen: Volume I.