# Fruit Basket

- By: American China Manufactory (Philadelphia)
- Date: c. 1770–72
- Medium: Soft-paste porcelain, underglaze blue decoration, and glaze
- Classification: Ceramics
- Dimensions: 5.1 × 14.7 × 14.7 cm (2 × 5 3/4 × 5 3/4 in.)
- Culture: Philadelphia
- Credit line: Vance American Art Fund; Americana, Jane and Morris Weeden, and Roger and J. Peter McCormick endowment funds
- Museum: [Art Institute of Chicago](https://www.artic.edu/artworks/266210)
- Rights: [Public domain (CC0)](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
- Picture: https://www.artic.edu/iiif/2/d12e997a-148b-cbbb-aa35-13c6152b8cc6/full/!1920,1080/0/default.jpg
- Who can see it: Little Ones profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

This delicate fruit basket is a rare example of early American porcelain, one of around 20 known surviving works by Gousse Bonnin and George Anthony Morris’s American China Manufactory. Porcelain is a strong, luminous type of clay that originated in China, where its formula was a heavily guarded secret. It eventually emerged as a prized material in global luxury goods, causing fierce competition between various producers of porcelain wares. The American China Manufactory fruit basket represents the early advancements of this industry in the American colonies, which followed English precedents such as the Worcester Porcelain Factory basket also in this case.

Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0