" As 7-Eleven clarifies, "That includes cookie jars, ladles, punchbowls and other containers that are thirsting to be filled with their favorite Slurpee flavor….
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Whilst the drinking of punch from punchbowls was an actual social practice of the times, the Sydney Cove punchbowls were specially commissioned and expensive items which had other purposes. Such punchbowls were prestigious items owned by individuals of high rank in society, such as John Hosking Sydney's first elected Mayor, and New York's fourth Governor Daniel Tomkins, who also acquired a punchbowl. The two punchbowls, previously owned by Hosking, are the first Chinese objects acquired by the Australiana Fund. The bowls could also have been commissioned as commemorative gifts, like the 1812 Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania Union Lodge punchbowl gift.
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About a thousand such 'European subject' designs are known from the long 18th century. Many of the original print sources have been identified though many remain to be found. Other examples include the Sydney punchbowls from the Macquarie era in Australia, 1810–1820.
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The Sydney punchbowls, made in China during the Jiaqing Emperor's reign (1796–1820) over the mid-Qing dynasty, are the only two known examples of Chinese export porcelain hand painted with Sydney scenes and dating from the Macquarie era. The bowls were procured in Canton about three decades after the First Fleet's arrival at Port Jackson where the British settlement at Sydney Cove was established in 1788. They also represent the trading between Australia and China via India at the time. Even though decorated punchbowls were prestigious items used for drinking punch at social gatherings during the 18th and 19th centuries, it is not known who originally commissioned these bowls or what special occasion they were made for.
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The punchbowls are a 'harlequin pair', similar but not exactly matching. The bowls have been donated independently, one to the State Library of New South Wales (SLNSW) in 1926 and the other to the Australian National Maritime Museum (ANMM) in 2006. The Library bowl is the more widely known of the pair. Its earliest provenance places it in England in the late 1840s, where it is said to originally have been commissioned for William Bligh; another source suggests Henry Colden Antill.
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She attended the Rossman School and John Burroughs School in St. Louis, and then the Fermata School for Girls in Aiken, South Carolina. Harkness was friends with a young Potter Stewart, whom she affectionately called "Potsie," and their relationship was written about by her biographer Craig Unger. After graduating in 1932, she and a group of female friends formed the Bitch Pack, a sub-culture of local debutantes who enjoyed subverting society events, including lacing punchbowls with mineral oil and performing stripteases on banquet tables.
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Examination of the cargo of ships wrecked during the early colonisation of AustraliaStaniforth, Mark (2009) 'Shipwreck cargoes: approaches to material culture in Australian maritime archaeology'. Historical Archaeology 43(3):95–100. show that the Country Trade played an important role in getting supplies, including Chinese porcelain traded via India often in Indian-built vessels, to the early Australian colonies. The two Sydney punchbowls are the only known examples of Chinese export porcelain hand painted with Sydney scenes and dating from the Macquarie era, lasting 1810–1821.
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The punchbowls can be considered a harlequin pair as they are similar but not exactly matching. They are both Chinese ceramics ware of Cantonese origin, made of clear glaze on hard-paste porcelain and painted with polychrome famille rose overglaze enamel and gilding. They are similar in size, each approximately in diameter, high and weighing about , footring high and in diameter. Whilst the indigenous Australian groups painted within the inner centre of both bowls are identical, the outer panoramic views of Sydney Cove are not.
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Canton hong trade was subsequently overshadowed by the rise of Hong Kong as a trading centre – territory ceded to the British as a consequence of China's military defeats – and the subsequent establishment of 80 Treaty ports along China's coast. The punchbowls therefore are a product made just before China's eclipse, commissioned in Canton, where they were painted and glazed by Chinese ceramic artists. The unpainted bowls, however, would have first been manufactured in Jingdezhan, a town by road from Canton, where pottery factories have operated for nearly 2,000 years, and still do today.
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The European (and soon the American) presence was restricted to the Thirteen Factories known as hongs on the harbour of Canton (now known as Guangzhou). The Canton hongs themselves are frequently illustrated on punchbowls, known as hong bowls, whereas the portrayal of ports that traded with Canton – such as Sydney and New York – are extraordinarily rare. The Canton System lasted until the defeat of China's Qing dynasty by the British Empire in the first of the Opium Wars in 1842. Virtually no Chinese export porcelain was produced from 1839 to 1860 because of the Opium Wars.
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It passed through several owners in Britain before it was presented to the State Library. The Museum bowl's first provenance is from England in 1932 and it has been suggested that it was made to the order of Arthur Phillip. Its whereabouts were unknown until it appeared in the Newark Museum, United States, in 1988, on loan from Peter Frelinghuysen Jr.. Through donations, the Maritime Museum later acquired the punchbowl from Frelinghuysen. The punchbowls are of polychrome famille rose with gilding, adorned with panoramic views from opposite vantage points of early 19th century Sydney, combined with traditional Chinese porcelain decorations and each features a rare, lively tondo grouping of Aboriginal figures.
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Punchbowls however, were not included in these sets, they were ordered separately as showcase pieces. The bowls were used to serve hot or cold drinks at special occasions in clubs, at social gatherings and in wealthy homes, or before or after grand dinners. After the British settlement at Sydney Cove was established in 1788, a significant part of the Chinese porcelain shipped to Australia came via British traders living in India. Operating under licences issued by the British East India Company, who held a commercial monopoly in the Far East, this trade was known as the 'Country Trade', the Indian ships were called 'Country Ships' and their captains 'Country Captains'.
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The gilded monogram initials on the Library punchbowl are perhaps the only current clue as to the original commissioner of the punchbowls. The initials are difficult to decipher because of partial loss of the gilt Copperplate script. Possibilities include HCA or HA, TCA or FCA over B. Several candidates have been suggested including Henry, 3rd Earl of Bathurst, and Sir Thomas Brisbane, New South Wales Governor in 1821–1825 after Lachlan Macquarie, but the most likely is Henry Colden Antill (1779–1852). Antill was appointed aide-de-camp to the fifth New South Wales Governor, Macquarie who was in office 1810–1821, on his arrival in Sydney on 1January 1810.
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The Library punchbowl has a view from the eastern side of Sydney Cove whilst the view on the Museum bowl is from Dawes Point on the western shore. This pairing follows a standard convention in late 18th-and early 19th-century topographical art of painting two views of the same scene from opposite vantage points. Whilst the Cantonese ceramic painters would have worked from images of Sydney Cove and the Aboriginal group provided by the customer commissioning the punchbowls, the border and edge trims were generally left to the choice of the ceramic painters. The traditional floral motif of such Chinese flowers as chrysanthemums, peonies, cherry and plum blossom has been applied to the internal borders of both bowls in a similar pattern.
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The bowl was subsequently in the possession of Francis Edwards Ltd before Coghlan's unexpected death in London on 30April 1926. Coghlan had personally collected the bowl from a Miss Hall at 'Highfield', 63 Seabrook Rd, Hythe (Kent), England, a few months after she had decided to offer the bowl to the New South Wales Government for £50. Earlier, a visit to Miss Hall by a Sydney schoolteacher, Jessie Stead, on 6August 1923, resulted in the proposal that the bowl ought to be the property of the City of Sydney. Jessie Stead later indicated that she was informed by Miss Hall that her father had acquired the bowl in the late 1840s – the earliest dating for the punchbowls' provenance – and that Miss Hall believed the bowl was commissioned for William Bligh, New South Wales's fourth Governor (in office 1806–1808).
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In 1820, artist John William Lewin's patron, merchant Alexander Riley, looking for ways to promote the New South Wales colony, stated: "It has long been a subject of our consideration in this Country that a Panorama exhibited in London of the Town of Sydney and surrounding scenery would create much public interest and ultimately be of service to the Colony". This purpose is clearly set forth even in the title of William Charles Wentworth's tome on New South Wales, which contained the engraving of Lewin's Sydney Cove painting. The full title ends "... With a Particular Enumeration of the Advantages Which These Colonies Offer for Emigration, and Their Superiority in Many Respects Over Those Possessed by the United States of America". The punchbowls were also an opportunity to present the art of topographical panoramas in the form of a high status object and to portray the new colony in a more glamorous way than that of simply a remote convict colony as perceived at the time.
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