A really pleasing palette of Famille Rose colors helps make this charming pair of Chinese export porcelain tea bowls and saucers so appealing. Each piece is centered with a Mandarin scene of a scholar at his table with attendants while being approached by a supplicant bearing a goose. The general theme to this story is that the scholar was a legendary calligrapher who took inspiration from watching the movement of geese and the marks they left when padding about the ground. The supplicant, wishing to be trained by the master here offers him his finest goose in hopes of being taken on as a student. The scenes are finely painted within a light turquoise latticework border with with animal vignettes. This story was used to decorated some of the fine Rockefeller and palaceware services of the 1790s-early 1800s. Good condition with only a small rim chip to one restored, and the second with a faint hairline (easily restorable) to the tea bowl. Circa 1800-1810.