Vienna Style Demitasse Cup And Saucer – Angelica Kauffman Classical Scene, Apple Green Ground, Gilded Interior, Beaded Gold, Unmarked c1900

A demitasse cup and saucer in the Vienna manner, small and deep on a short pedestal foot, with a gilt ring handle. A band of apple green circles the cup, hung with gold swags. Inside it is gold to the base, with a small scene at the bottom. The saucer is a broad field of burnished gold around a reserve of three classical women, signed Angelica Kaufman.

Look closely at an outline: it runs at an even weight, without the thickening a brush leaves, while the flesh tones and the shading are painted over it, here and there crossing the line. The outline is printed, then, and the colour is painting — which is where the depth comes from.

The gold repays attention too: the saucer's broad field is burnished bright while the beads on the green band are left matt. Gold leaves the kiln dull, and only what an agate rubs comes up shining, so the contrast is deliberate. The cup's interior was gilded as one field, a cabinet finish rather than one meant for a spoon.

Around 1900, give or take. Both bases are plain white, so there is no mark to read; the age comes from the decoration itself — the transfer-and-colour method, the beaded gilding and the classical reserve all belong to the decades when this style was worked across central Europe, and Kauffman subjects cluster at that end of it.

The name in the reserve is the painter's, not the decorator's. Angelica Kauffman was among the founders of London's Royal Academy in 1768, and her compositions travelled Europe as engravings for a century after she died — signature and all, which is how it arrived here in print. The pottery itself is unknown: Vienna's manufactory closed in 1864 and the style outlived it everywhere.