Tankard, Qianlong c.1765, with the arms of Hockin of Cornwall
A Qianlong 4¾” tankard, at the rim a wide underglaze-blue flowered band with trellis round the foot; the reverse with a chicken-skin ground overlaid with blue flower sprays, with a strap handle. The rim decoration on such pieces (Style R2 in Chinese Armorial Porcelain) is a fore-runner of the Fitzhugh-style borders.
The unusual armorial on this tankard, the only known piece to date with this border, is explained in an excerpt from An Historical Survey of the County of Cornwall by Charles Sandoe Gilbert (1820):
"In the time of war with France, at the beginning of Queen Anne’s reign . . . a ship of war cruising in the Bristol Channel, came to anchor off an estate called Godrevy, in the possession of John Hockin, it being conjectured that the Frenchman’s intention was to send in a boat to plunder the house and carry off the cattle from the estate. This John Hockin and his family became alarmed and collected their friends and neighbours to keep watch that night on the cliff; at day break they all dispersed, thinking the danger over."
". . . but just as Thomas Hockin, father of the patentee, then a young man, was getting into bed, another person, whose fears had led him out more than once to take a view, came in a great hurry and told him that a boat full of men, was making for the shore. On hearing this, Thomas slipped on his clothes, and catching up a gun . . . ran out and passed down a steep hill to the sea, in sight of the boat, from whence he was fired at several times; he, however, got behind a rock and thence with his gun fired on the boat with so much vigour and effect as to prevent the crew’s landing, and at last, made them turn about and row back again as fast as they could."
On such tales of valour, particularly when trouncing an ancient foe, was based many an armorial, and so it was with the Cornish Hockin family – arms being granted in 1764 to the son of young Thomas, with a proud British lion on a field of patriotic scarlet, standing triumphantly on a musket, beneath which is a sea of blue bestrewn with French fleurs-de-lis ‘in disarray’. A seagull stands guard on a rock as a crest, and the punning motto (which includes the name as ’Hoc in’) reads ’Hoc in loco Deus rupes’ or ’Here in this place God is a Rock’.
Reference : Howard, David S.; Chinese Armorial Porcelain, Volume I, p.680 for a later service with Fitzhugh style border. This service, with new information above, to be illustrated in a third volume.
Condition : Small interior rim chip filled and invisible, otherwise perfect.
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