A cup the size of a coin, painted with hens, chicks, and a peony, and prized out of all proportion to its size for five hundred years.
The Chenghua chicken cup is the masterpiece of doucai, a Ming technique that sets underglaze blue against overglaze colours so the two meet at a precise line. The Chenghua court made few of them, and the later emperors, Qianlong above all, hunted them as relics of a lost refinement.
Surviving cups sit in Beijing and Taipei and sell, when one appears, for sums that make the object hard to look at calmly. It is the proof that in Chinese porcelain, small and perfect beat large and merely grand.
Object details
| Name | Chenghua Chicken Cup (Doucai) (斗彩鸡缸杯) |
|---|---|
| Artefact no. | — |
| Technique | Doucai (contrasting colours) porcelain |
| Period | Ming dynasty, Chenghua reign (1465-1487) |
| Collection | The Palace Museum, Beijing |
| Source | 北京故宫博物院 |
Image © The Palace Museum, Beijing. See the original in the museum collection.