Design for a Teacup

This hand-colored design shows a porcelain teacup decorated with a naturalistic study of purple grapes, golden-red apples, and green foliage. The illustration demonstrates the aesthetic principles of late-nineteenth-century ceramics production, when Japanese and American manufacturers combined botanical precision with ornamental elegance. The spare, refined composition—fruit and leaves clustered on the cup's upper register against white ground—reflects the era's taste for imported Japanese design alongside Western horticultural imagery. Such designs were transfer-printed or hand-painted onto dinnerware for middle-class households. The numbered catalog references suggest this sheet served as a manufacturer's pattern record, part of the practical documentation systems that industrialized the craft traditions of tableware design.