Shaving bowl on a high footring. Moulded ribbed rim with a saved semi-circular section and two small holes opposite the cut-out section. Decorated in underglaze blue and overglaze iron-red, black, green, grey and yellow enamel with a jardinière filled with a leafy flowering peonies. On the rim a mountainous landscape with trees and a pagoda alternating with three peony flower heads reserved on a underglaze blue ground. On the reverse two wide spread prunus sprays.
Shaving bowls were used by barbers and were indispensable in the Dutch household too. They were made of earthenware, pewter, copper and even silver. They had an alternative use, namely to let blood from a vein in the arm during blood-letting, a medical procedure thought to drain bad blood from the system also performed by the barber/surgeon. In the seventeenth century, regulations were put in place in England to govern what barbers were permitted to do. Thus the became confined to bloodletting and treating external diseases. In Prussia the barbers' and the surgeons' guild joined in 1779, and it was said of great Prussian surgeons that they had risen "up from the barber's bowl'. Both purposes explain the semi-circular saving.
The two holes are for a cord used to suspend it from the client's neck to catch lather and water during shaving, or to hang the bowl on the wall thus implying that owners also appreciated the bowl for its decorative value as well as its function. Chinese shaving bowls usually have the holes in the footring while Japanese examples have them in the rim. (Jörg 2003/1, p.184 & Sargent 2012, p.189)
For an identically sized and shaped shaving bowls, please see: Oosterse keramiek uit Groninger kollekties,exhibition catalogue Groninger Museum, (C.J.A. Jörg, Martinipers/Wolters-Noordhoff, Groningen 1982). p.81, cat. 123. Fine & Curious, Japanese export porcelain in Dutch Collections, (C.J.A. Jörg, Hotei Publishing, Amsterdam, 2003), p.185, cat. 229. Condition: Two chips to the rim.
References: Jörg 1982/2, cat. 123 Jörg 2003/1, p.184 & cat. 229 Sargent 2012, p.183 & p.189