Figure of Asia and Africa from the Four Continents (c. 1760): Art, History and Details

Figure of Asia and Africa from the Four Continents (c. 1760) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Chelsea Porcelain Factory (Britain, London, 1745–84).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Often collected by wealthy British merchants who were beneficiaries of colonial expansion, figural groups were frequently part of elaborate table decorations meant to signify wealth and global dominance. In this work, Africa, who wears an elephant headdress and holds a scorpion in one hand, wrestles with Asia, who is surrounded by perfumes and native fruits. These depictions of Africa and Asia reveal a purely imagined understanding of faraway places.

Object facts

• Title: Figure of Asia and Africa from the Four Continents
• Date: c. 1760
• Creator attribution: Chelsea Porcelain Factory (Britain, London, 1745–84)
• Culture: England, Chelsea, mid-18th century
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: soft-paste porcelain
• Dimensions: Overall: 23.5 x 17.6 x 18.7 cm (9 1/4 x 6 15/16 x 7 3/8 in.)
• Collection: Decorative Arts
• Department: Decorative Art and Design
• Accession number: 1917.601.2

A detail from the museum

Figural representations of the four continents date back to the 1500s, but such imagery became even more popular in the 1700s as European empires expanded.

Collection credit

Bequest of Mary Warden Harkness

Further reading listed by the museum

• F. A. W. "The Bequests of Mary Warden Harkness: A Tribute and an Accounting." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 15, no. 2 (February 1928): 43-50.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.