A white bowl with flat handles and lid. The blue decorations are architectural and floral.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 / 12

Unknown Maker, Chinese export

Sugar Bowl

Maker

Culture

Chinese export

Title

Sugar Bowl

Year

ca. 1750

Medium

Porcelain with underglaze blue and glaze

Materials/Techniques

Techniques

Porcelain with underglaze blue and glaze

Materials

clay products

Geography

Place Made: China

Credit / Object Number

Credit

Gift of William H. Claflin

Object Number

1991.179.11

Type

Ceramics

Exhibition History

Trading Earth

Ceramics, Commodities, and Commerce

Apr 09, 2022 – Aug 03, 2025

Label copy

Over centuries, as demand for sugar increased, the locations where sugar cane was grown expanded, as did the number of enslaved humans forced to cultivate this labor-intensive crop. Originating in New Guinea, sugar cane was brought to India and then the Caribbean, where the Dominican Republic led production in the early 1500s. A century later, sugar cane became the base of the economy in Dutch-colonized Brazil, where more than 500,000 Africans had been shipped through the Atlantic slave trade to plant, tend, harvest, and process the crop.

Image use

The images on this website can enable discovery and collaboration and support new scholarship, and we encourage their use.

This object is in the Public Domain and available under a CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication

Tombstone

Unknown Maker, Chinese export

Sugar Bowl, ca. 1750

Porcelain with underglaze blue and glaze

Gift of William H. Claflin 1991.179.11

To request new photography, please send an email to imagerequest@risd.edu and include your name and the object's accession number.

Feedback

We view our online collection as a living documents, and our records are frequently revised and enhanced. If you have additional information or have spotted an error, please send feedback to curatorial@risd.edu.