China tea cups from the Rock Rest Tourist Home: Museum Object and Cultural History

The object in the museum catalogue

Nine (9) Noritake tea cups, pattern N1323 (ca. 1933), from the Rock Rest Tourist Home. Each cup has a white interior. The interior top edges of the cups have a thin, green scalloped band with yellow triangles. The exterior surfaces of the cups are cream and are decorated with two (2) yellow, dark pink, blue, and green floral sprays above a second band of green scalloping and yellow triangles. The top edges, cup handles, and edge of the base are decorated with gilt. The bottom bases of the cups are white with a Noritake stamp. The backstamp is a green arabesque wreath with yellow fill and a large, arabesque, black [M] at the center. Black text stamped above and below the wreath reads [NORITAKE] at the top and [JAPAN] at the bottom.

Materials, dates and provenance

• Date: ca. 1933
• Manufactured by: Noritake Co., Limited, Japanese, founded 1876
• Owned by: Clayton Sinclair, American
• Owned by: Hazel Sinclair, American
• Subject of: Rock Rest Tourist Home, American, 1948 - 1976
• Type: dinner services
• Medium: paint on leaf (metal) porcelain
• Dimensions: H x W x D: 2 1/8 × 4 5/16 × 3 11/16 in. (5.4 × 11 × 9.3 cm)
• Dimensions: Diameter: 3 11/16 in. (9.3 cm)
• Place collected: Kittery, York County, Maine, United States, North and Central America
• Place made: Nagoya, Aichi, Japan, Asia
• Topic: African American
• Topic: Black Enterprise
• Topic: Black interiors
• Topic: Business
• Topic: Cooking and dining
• Topic: Craftsmanship
• Topic: Domestic life
• Topic: Ornamentation
• Object number: 2011.12.40.6.1-.9
• Credit Line: Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of Portsmouth Black Heritage Trail, Inc.
• Data Source: National Museum of African American History and Culture

Sources and reuse

Catalogue descriptions and facts adapted from National Museum of African American History and Culture through the Smithsonian's official Open Access dataset. This record explicitly marks its metadata CC0 1.0; formatting and selection have been changed. The displayed image also has an explicit CC0 designation. The underlying object's rights statement is: No known copyright restrictions Proper usage is the responsibility of the user.