Description
- Vintage
- Full tea set
- 6 cups
- 6 saucers
- 6 bread and butter / tea plates
- 1 covered sugar bowl
- 1 cream jug
- 1 Tea Pot
- Hand wash
- Gold Bamboo Design
- Hand Painted
- Similar to Noritake Bambina Platinum Bamboo Large Mid Century Modern Shape 1950s
This ware is in fact an export product specifically designed in the mid 19th century to cater to the western export market. The Japanese themselves had very little interest in this ware.
The teacups also have lithophane geisha, particularly visible when the bottom of the cup is held over a light source. Exquisite?
Lithophanes (from lithos, “stone,” and phanes, “appear”) were popular in Europe in the mid-1800s, and were made from 1830 to about 1900, largely in Germany and England. Their production was involved:
Lithophanes began their life as a thin sheet of beeswax. Artisans carved the pictures in the wax, then a plaster-of-Paris mould was made from the wax carving and the porcelain slip was poured into this mould to dry. Removed from the mould, the porcelain was then fired. Where the picture is the lightest, the porcelain is very thin, and where it is darkest, the porcelain is very thick. (Helen’s Lithophanes)
Cups with lithophane geisha were made in Japan in the late 1930s through early 1960s, largely as export ware. They were mass produced after WWII, and were a common item purchased and brought back to the United States by service members.
