This blue and white tea cup has a rounded base and a bracket handle. It is decorated on the exterior with a landscape depicting two birds flying above a pavilion beside pine and willow trees and a sampan and a pagoda on a distant island surrounded by stylised clouds. On the rims of the interior, there are also geometric designs in underglaze blue. This cup comes in a set with a matching saucer. Uncovered from an English shipwreck called ‘Diana’ that sank off the Straits of Malacca in 1817, this saucer is one of the many Jingdezhen export wares found on the ship. Some of the export wares in the Diana cargo were catered towards American tastes and were very popular with the American market and with the Anglo-Indian upper classes in India.
