Hen and Chicks Covered Tureen on Stand (c. 1755): Art, History and Details

Hen and Chicks Covered Tureen on Stand (c. 1755) 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:

The ceramic factory at Chelsea, located along the river Thames in western London, was Britain’s most renowned factory of decorative porcelain in the mid-1700s. Large tureens in the form of chickens or rabbits appealed to wealthy aristocrats, who took great care in developing specimen animal and poultry breeds on their country estates. The design for this particular tureen was taken from a popular seventeenth-century print by Francis Barlow depicting a farmyard.

Object facts

• Title: Hen and Chicks Covered Tureen on Stand
• Date: c. 1755
• Creator attribution: Chelsea Porcelain Factory (Britain, London, 1745–84)
• Culture: England, London, Chelsea
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: soft-paste porcelain
• Dimensions: Overall: 24.8 x 34.9 x 25.7 cm (9 3/4 x 13 3/4 x 10 1/8 in.)
• Collection: Decorative Arts
• Department: Decorative Art and Design
• Accession number: 1984.58

A detail from the museum

Though the form of a soup tureen suggests a functional role at the dining table, such large, expensive porcelains were probably only used for decoration because hot liquids might have easily caused them to crack.

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Turner, Evan H. “The Year in Review for 1984.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 72, no. 2 (April 1985): 163–207.
• Bidwell, Frederick E. and Leslie Cade. The CMA Companion: A Guide to the Cleveland Museum of Art. New York: Scala Arts Publishers, 2014.
• "Reimagining the British Galleries: Our curators preview the new look of the space.” Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine vol. 59, no. 6 (November/December 2019): 5-7.

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.