A rather fine Chinese export porcelain armorial handled cup very well painted in the rare Black Fitzhugh pattern.  The form itself a bit unusual with a flared beaker silhouette and a gilded ring handle, most likely after English porcelain forms of the period, and decorated with a central diapered roundel bearing a family’s crest with the image of a falcon.  Illustrated and discussed in Howard’s Chinese Armorial Porcelain, Vol. II, page 541 where it is identified as one of four services bearing this crest and that it is likely from a service made for Capt. Joseph Cotton, a Director of the East India Company from 1795-1823.  It is also pointed out that this is the only known example of the Black Fitzhugh pattern with a British crest or armorial. Other than three small hairlines, the piece is in very good condition and exhibits a real mastery of the decorator’s paint brush.  Circa 1815.