A tureen is a serving dish for foods such as soups or stews, often shaped as a broad, deep, oval vessel with fixed handles and a low domed cover with a knob or handle. Over the centuries, tureens have appeared in many different forms: round, rectangular, or made into fanciful shapes such as animals or wildfowl. Tureens may be ceramic—either the glazed earthenware called faience, or porcelain —or silver, and customarily they stand on an undertray or platter made en suite. [lower-roman 1]
The tureen as a piece of tableware called a pot à oille—a Catalan-Provençal soup—came into use in late seventeenth-century France. Alternative explanations for the etymology are that it is related to the earlier word terrine, a borrowing from the French for 'a large, circular, earthenware dish' [1] or that it is named to honour the French military hero Marshal Turenne.
The tureen's prehistory may be traced to the use of the communal bowl, but during the reign of Louis XIV it was developed from a practical covered serving vessel into one of the most richly ornamented centerpieces of the formal apparatus of dining. This period also saw the old practice of dressing the dinner table with every dish at once ( service à la française ) superseded by the new practice of separate courses at meal time ( service à la russe), each entrée entering from the kitchens with an air of ceremony. [2] Soup remained the first course of most meals, from the king's table to the peasant's, and the soup tureen on its serving platter provided the opening ceremony. Tureens naturally tended towards the impressive; the world's record auction price fetched for a single piece of silver was achieved by a silver tureen made in 1733 by the Parisian silversmith Thomas Germain, sold at Sotheby's New York, 13 November 1996: at US$10,287,500, tripling the former record.
Most seventeenth-century French silver tureens were melted down to finance the wars of Louis' late years and may be glimpsed only in paintings. The ornate silver tureens of that period figure in buffets—still life of silver and game—by artists such as Alexandre-François Desportes, or in more modest still life, such as the painting by Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin (illustration), which is dated 1728 but depicts a silver tureen of Baroque form of the first decade of the century.
During the mid-eighteenth century, tureens in appropriate naturalistic shapes, such as tureens in the form of a head of cabbage, were popular. The Chelsea porcelain manufactory produced tureens in the form of rabbits: a Chelsea sale catalogue of 1755 advertised a "Fine tureen in the form of a rabbit as big as life." [3]
Tureens are most practical for serving about six people. In eighteenth-century France, a small individual covered standing bowl on a small platter, essentially an individual tureen, was called an écuelle (also anglicised to ecuelle). It could be lifted by its twin handles and drunk from directly. The shape was used for other purposes; it is often found in toilet services, where its purpose is uncertain. Its modern descendant in tableware is the two-handled cream soup bowl on matching plate. A small covered dish for sauce, called a saucière, could also take the form of a small tureen; it might be integral with its platter (illustration right), for ease in handling and to contain drips. [4] [ failed verification ]
John T. Dorrance, a member of the family owners of Campbell's Soup, assembled, starting in 1966, the largest representative collection of soup tureens, which has been donated to the Henry Francis DuPont Winterthur Museum. [5]
Delftware or Delft pottery, also known as Delft Blue or as delf, is a general term now used for Dutch tin-glazed earthenware, a form of faience. Most of it is blue and white pottery, and the city of Delft in the Netherlands was the major centre of production, but the term covers wares with other colours, and made elsewhere. It is also used for similar pottery, English delftware.
The Mildenhall Treasure is a large hoard of 34 masterpieces of Roman silver tableware from the fourth century AD, and by far the most valuable Roman objects artistically and by weight of bullion in Britain. It was found at West Row, near Mildenhall, Suffolk, in 1942. It consists of over thirty items and includes the Great Dish which weighs over 8 kg (18 lb).
Tableware is any dish or dishware used for setting a table, serving food, and dining. It includes cutlery, glassware, serving dishes, and other items for practical as well as decorative purposes. The quality, nature, variety and number of objects varies according to culture, religion, number of diners, cuisine and occasion. For example, Middle Eastern, Indian or Polynesian food culture and cuisine sometimes limits tableware to serving dishes, using bread or leaves as individual plates, and not infrequently without use of cutlery. Special occasions are usually reflected in higher quality tableware.
A bowl is a typically round dish or container generally used for preparing, serving, or consuming food. The interior of a bowl is characteristically shaped like a spherical cap, with the edges and the bottom forming a seamless curve. This makes bowls especially suited for holding liquids and loose food, as the contents of the bowl are naturally concentrated in its center by the force of gravity. The exterior of a bowl is most often round, but can be of any shape, including rectangular.
A plate is a broad, mainly flat vessel on which food can be served. A plate can also be used for ceremonial or decorative purposes. Most plates are circular, but they may be any shape, or made of any water-resistant material. Generally plates are raised round the edges, either by a curving up, or a wider lip or raised portion. Vessels with no lip, especially if they have a more rounded profile, are likely to be considered as bowls or dishes, as are very large vessels with a plate shape. Plates are dishware, and tableware. Plates in wood, pottery and metal go back into antiquity in many cultures.
"Blue and white pottery" covers a wide range of white pottery and porcelain decorated under the glaze with a blue pigment, generally cobalt oxide. The decoration is commonly applied by hand, originally by brush painting, but nowadays by stencilling or by transfer-printing, though other methods of application have also been used. The cobalt pigment is one of the very few that can withstand the highest firing temperatures that are required, in particular for porcelain, which partly accounts for its long-lasting popularity. Historically, many other colours required overglaze decoration and then a second firing at a lower temperature to fix that.
Chelsea porcelain is the porcelain made by the Chelsea porcelain manufactory, the first important porcelain manufactory in England, established around 1743–45, and operating independently until 1770, when it was merged with Derby porcelain. It made soft-paste porcelain throughout its history, though there were several changes in the "body" material and glaze used. Its wares were aimed at a luxury market, and its site in Chelsea, London, was close to the fashionable Ranelagh Gardens pleasure ground, opened in 1742.
Biscuit porcelain, bisque porcelain or bisque is unglazed, white porcelain treated as a final product, with a matte appearance and texture to the touch. It has been widely used in European pottery, mainly for sculptural and decorative objects that are not tableware and so do not need a glaze for protection.
Mintons was a major company in Staffordshire pottery, "Europe's leading ceramic factory during the Victorian era", an independent business from 1793 to 1968. It was a leader in ceramic design, working in a number of different ceramic bodies, decorative techniques, and "a glorious pot-pourri of styles - Rococo shapes with Oriental motifs, Classical shapes with Medieval designs and Art Nouveau borders were among the many wonderful concoctions". As well as pottery vessels and sculptures, the firm was a leading manufacturer of tiles and other architectural ceramics, producing work for both the Houses of Parliament and United States Capitol.
Tin-glazed pottery is earthenware covered in lead glaze with added tin oxide which is white, shiny and opaque ; usually this provides a background for brightly painted decoration. It has been important in Islamic and European pottery, but very little used in East Asia. The pottery body is usually made of red or buff-colored earthenware and the white glaze imitated Chinese porcelain. The decoration on tin-glazed pottery is usually applied to the unfired glaze surface by brush with metallic oxides, commonly cobalt oxide, copper oxide, iron oxide, manganese dioxide and antimony oxide. The makers of Italian tin-glazed pottery from the late Renaissance blended oxides to produce detailed and realistic polychrome paintings.
L'oille is a French potée or soup believed to be the forerunner of pot-au-feu composed of various meats and vegetables.
Rörstrand porcelain was one of the most famous Swedish porcelain manufacturers, with production initially at Karlbergskanalen in Birkastan in Stockholm.
Chantilly porcelain is French soft-paste porcelain produced between 1730 and 1800 by the manufactory of Chantilly in Oise, France. The wares are usually divided into three periods, 1730-51, 1751-1760, and a gradual decline from 1760 to 1800.
French porcelain has a history spanning a period from the 17th century to the present. The French were heavily involved in the early European efforts to discover the secrets of making the hard-paste porcelain known from Chinese and Japanese export porcelain. They succeeded in developing soft-paste porcelain, but Meissen porcelain was the first to make true hard-paste, around 1710, and the French took over 50 years to catch up with Meissen and the other German factories.
Rouen porcelain is soft-paste porcelain made in the city of Rouen, Normandy, France, during a brief period from about 1673 to 1696. It was the earliest French porcelain, but was probably never made on a commercial basis; only nine pieces are now thought to survive.
The Musée de la Faïence de Marseille was a museum in southern Marseille, France, dedicated to faience, a type of pottery. It opened to the public in June 1995, in Château Pastré at 157, Avenue de Montredon 13008 Marseille. It closed on 31 December 2012, to allow for the transfer of its collections to the new faience museum at Château Borély, the Museum of the Decorative Arts, Fashion and Ceramics, as part of preparations for Marseille becoming the European Capital of Culture in 2013.
Strasbourg faience or Strasbourg ware is a form of faience produced by the Strasbourg-Haguenau company in Strasbourg in the 18th century.
Niderviller faience is one of the most famous French pottery manufacturers. It has been located in the village of Niderviller, Lorraine, France since 1735. It began as a maker of faïence, and returned to making this after a period in the mid-18th century when it also made hard-paste porcelain. In both materials, it made heavy use of deep magenta or pink in its decoration.
Porcelain services that were produced during the Rococo period, roughly aligning with the reign of Louis XV of France from 1715 to 1774, included a variety of shapes or molds of dishes for use during savory and sweetmeat courses. These included plates, platters, tureens, sauce cups, cake stands, epergnes, wine coolers, and ice cream coolers, as well as porcelain molds not designed for food services such as etagere vases, flower vases, potpourri vases, toilet set bowls, and plaques inlaid into furniture. Two of the most famous manufacturers of rococo porcelain services in Europe were the Manufacture Nationale de Sevres in France and Meissen Porcelain in Germany. While Sevres worked almost exclusively in soft paste porcelain during the rococo period, which was composed of a translucent mixture of clay, glass, and minerals such as feldspar and quartz, Meissen was the first European porcelain manufactory to produce hard paste wares, which were modeled after earlier Asian imported porcelain which contained clay, minerals, and kaolin, which allowed the clay to survive much higher firing temperatures in the kiln, producing more opaque and stronger completed dishes than were previously available domestically.
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