American-Chinese family’s classic Canton porcelain finds new home in the Smithsonian
- Made in the Shanghai factory of Yuet Tung China Works, the last hand-painted porcelain producer in Hong Kong, the Canton Rose dinner set was a wedding gift
- Produced for export, the porcelain’s pattern dates from the late Qing dynasty and is known for its brilliant colours and use of gold
Ever since Grace Young can remember, once a year on Lunar New Year’s Eve in San Francisco her mother would carefully take out her best china to use for the family reunion dinner – a feast including white cut chicken, poached steel-head fish, stir-fried clams, lettuce wraps, glazed roast squab and bird’s nest soup.
The china, now about 80 years old, still looks vibrant, each plate, bowl, spoon and platter hand-painted with a Chinese pattern of fruit such as peaches and phoenix eye fruit, birds and butterflies, and large deep pink roses, along with the Chinese character for longevity.
“I don’t remember us ever breaking a dish, it wasn’t like a normal thing every year, like, ‘Oh, we lost another bowl, we lost another’ – no – everyone was super careful and then it was carefully wrapped and then put back into the cabinet,” says Young, now a cookbook author and recipe tester in her mid-60s living in New York.
In 1999, the porcelain was featured in her book, The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen, with a portrait of her, her mother and her grandmother on the cover with Lunar New Year’s eve dishes on the table.
Even though Young’s parents cherished the porcelain for decades, they didn’t know where the pieces were made, only that they were a wedding gift from Young’s paternal grandparents in 1950.
“I never knew the name of this pattern. My mother didn’t know the name of the pattern, we just called them our fancy dishes that came out; we didn’t even call them a name,” recalls Young.
