Rare American market “Cow Pox Innoculation” Breakfast Tea Bowl and Saucer

A rather rare Chinese export porcelain breakfast tea bowl and saucer made for the American market of medical and historical interest.  These pieces are from a service ordered for Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse of Cambridge, Massachusetts, (1746-1846) a Harvard professor who in 1800 successfully innoculated his own children with the cowpox vaccine against smallpox. A tea service was consequentially ordered with this cow imagery to commemorate and promote the practice as it seems vaccines were as controversial then as they are today.  Fully illustrated and discussed in Schiffer’s China for America, pages 174-175.  The tea bowl measuring 4 1/4″, the saucer 5 1/2″ in diameter. Two lines sealed and two small pieces out, and restored, to the tea bowl and two lines sealed to the saucer.  Circa 1805.