Elegant Goose Tureen and Cover (Iberian Market)

This goose tureen is magnificently poised and elegant. It is decorated in beautiful, bright famille rose enamels. The name comes from an opaque pink-red enamel in the palette. Other significant colors in this palette are opaque yellow and opaque white. The Chinese developed the palette circa 1725
in response to European taste and with technology imported by Jesuits working at the Imperial palace in Beijing.

This goose tureen is apparently copied from a European original, although the precise models are unclear. Käendler at Meissen modelled standing geese, and white Chinese copies are recorded. Adam von Löwenfinck developed a wide range of popular animal tureens at the Strasbourg factories under Paul-Antoine Hannong. Examples of goose, turkey, woodcock, and oxhead tureens are known.

Other bird tureens and covered boxes were made in English factories, for example, the nesting partridges made at Bow, which were also accurately copied by the Chinese. It is also likely that the Chinese contributed to these designs from their own tradition: avian-form boxes were known in
earlier times, especially the Han dynasty, and later cloisonné and bronze examples of ducks and geese are also known.

In Chinese mythology, the goose symbolizes yang and is the Prince of Light and Masculinity. It is also seen as the harbinger of good news and was often given as a betrothal offering. Geese mate for life, and pairs of them often appear on Chinese porcelain and portray marital fidelity. By convention geese also carry letters. In the Western Han period, the captured General Su Wu sent a message to Emperor Wu on the leg of a goose, leading to his rescue.