Chinese Export Porcelain

This eighteenth-century Chinese porcelain export plate is decorated in what is known as a grape and squirrel pattern, based on the figures at the center of the plate. This pattern was popular in colonial Virginia, and fragments of porcelain decorated in that style have been found during archaeological digs at Burwell’s Landing near Kingsmill, on Jamestown Island, at Yorktown, in at least four sites in Williamsburg, and in a trash pit at Mount Vernon.